The photon blockade effect of a complete Buck-Sukumar model

Abstract

<sec>The Buck-Sukumar (BS) model, with a nonlinear coupling between the atom and the light field, is well defined only when its coupling strength is lower than a critical coupling. Its energy collapses at a critical coupling and is unbounded beyond that value. In other words, the BS model is incomplete. We introduce a simple and complete BS model by adding a nonlinear photon term into the initial BS model. Considering the rotating wave approximation, this complete BS model conserves the excited number and the parity. By expanding it in the subspace of the product state between the atom and the field, we solve the time-independent Schrödinger equation to obtain the eigenenergy and eigenstate. Furthermore, we explore the influence of the nonlinear photon term on the energy spectrum and the photon blockade effect for the complete BS model by calculating the excited number and second-order correlation function.</sec><sec>Our study shows that, the nonlinear photon term not only eliminates the energy spectral collapse but also makes it well-defined and complete in all the coupling regime. When at the resonance between the atomic and the field frequency, the nonlinear photon term breaks the harmonicity of the energy spectrum and produces a ladder of the excited number in the ground state. Because the larger nonlinear photon term inhibits the photon transition from an energy level to the higher one, it produces the single-photon projection state in the larger coupling region. Accordingly, we find that the nonlinear photon term promotes photon blockade by calculating the second-order correlation function. When at the non-resonant region, the nonlinear photon term enlarges the originally anharmonic energy ladder. For a complete BS model with the fixed nonlinear photon coupling strength and the fixed detuning, the energy level for the positive detuning is lower than that with the negative detuning, and more energy is required to overcome the absorption of a photon. Therefore, the positive detuning promotes the photon blockade. For the negative detuning, the system is more likely to absorb a photon and jump to a higher energy level, and therefore, suppresses the photon blockade.</sec>