Quantum control and quantum chaos in cavity QED

Abstract

Nonlinear dynamics in the fundamental interaction between a two-level atom with recoil and a quantized radiation field in a high-quality cavity is studied. We consider the strongly coupled atom-field system as a quantum-classical hybrid with dynamically coupled quantum and classical degrees of freedom. It is shown that at given initial conditions the regime of atomic motion is governed mainly by the detuning of the atom-field resonance /spl delta/. We show that, even in the absence of any other interaction with environment, the interaction of a purely quantum atom-field system with the external atomic degree of freedom provides the emergence of classical dynamical chaos from quantum electrodynamics (QED). It manifest itself in the classical degree of freedom as a random walking of an atom inside the cavity and in the quantum degrees of freedom as a sensitive dependence of atomic inversion on small variations in initial conditions. It is shown that dependence of variance of entanglement on /spl delta/, correlates strongly with the dependence of maximum Lyapunov exponent on /spl delta/. This result provides a quantum-classical correspondence in a closed physical system.