The thermalization process of an atom with the thermal radiation field

Abstract

We study the time evolution of an atom suddenly coupled to a thermal radiation field. As a simplified model of the atom-electromagnetic field system we use a system composed of a harmonic oscillator linearly coupled to a scalar field in the framework of the recently introduced dressed coordinates and dressed states. We show that the time evolution of the thermal expectation values for the occupation number operators depends exclusively on the probabilities associated with the emission and absorption of field quanta. In particular, the time evolution of the number operator associated with the atom is given in terms of the probability of remaining in the first excited state and the decay probabilities from this state by emission of field quanta of frequencies ωk. Also, it is shown that independent of the initial state of the atom, it thermalizes with the thermal radiation field in a time scale of the order of the inverse coupling constant.