Amplitude modulated Bloch oscillations of photon probability distribution in a cavity-atom system

Abstract

We study the dynamics of the Rabi Hamiltonian in the medium coupling regime with $\left\vert g/ω\right\vert \sim 0.07$, where $g$ is atom-field coupling constant, $ω$ is the field frequency, for the quantum state with average photon number $\bar{n}\sim 10^{4}$. We map the original Hamiltonian to an effective one, which describes a tight-binding chain subjected to a staggered linear potential. It is shown that the photon probability distribution of a Gaussian-type state exhibits the amplitude modulated Bloch oscillation (BO), which is a superposition of two conventional BOs with a half-BO-period delay between them and is essentially another type of Bloch-Zener oscillation. The probability transition between the two BOs can be controlled and suppressed by the ratio $g\sqrt{\bar{n}}% /ω$, as well as in-phase resonant oscillating atomic frequency $Ω\left( t\right) $, leading to multiple zero-transition points.