Nonlinear stability of spin-flip excitations

Abstract

A rather complete discussion of the nonlinear electrodynamic behavior of a negative-temperature spin system is presented. The method presented here is based on a coupled set of master equations, one describing the time evolution of the photon (i.e., the spin-flip excitation) distribution function and the other describing the time evolution of the particle distribution function. It is found that the initially unstable (i.e., growing) sping-flip excitations grow to such a large amplitude that their nonlinear reaction on the particle distribution function becomes important. It is then shown that the initially totally inverted two-level spin system evolves rapidly (through this nonlinear photon-particle coupling) towards a quasilinear steady state where the populations of the spin-up and the spin-down states are equal to each other. Explicit expressions for the time taken to reach this quasilinear steady state and the energy in the spin-flip excitations at this state are also presented.