Universal Zeno competition in the dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model

Abstract

In this paper we demonstrate competitive Zeno physics in the dissipative Jaynes-Cummings model. The mechanism relies on Zeno coexistence between the single-mode field and the environment. We show that the Zeno suppression of coherent evolution predicted by the standard Jaynes-Cummings model can dramatically fail in the presence of the dissipative environment. For hydrogen atom, such a Zeno effect is not usually observable because the environment ignored previously would, in fact, work in a dominant manner. Moreover, beyond the extremely short-time measurement limit in atomic decay, the Zeno time for hydrogen reaches ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}10}$ s in the dressed-state picture, which presents an immediately realizable Zeno scheme for the decay of a real atom in the current technology.