Entanglement, fidelity, and quantum-classical correlations with an atom walking in a quantized cavity field

Abstract

Stability and instability of quantum evolution are studied in the interaction between a two-level atom with photon recoil and a quantized field mode in an ideal cavity, the basic model of cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED). It is shown that the Jaynes-Cummings dynamics can be unstable in the regime of chaotic walking of the atomic center-of-mass in the quantized field of a standing wave in the absence of any kind of interaction with environment. This kind of quantum instability manifests itself in strong variations of reduced quantum purity and entropy, correlating with the respective classical Lyapunov exponent, and in exponential sensitivity of fidelity of quantum states to small variations in the atom-field detuning. The connection between quantum entanglement and fidelity and the center-of-mass motion is clarified analytically and numerically for a few regimes of that motion. The results are illustrated with two specific initial field states: the Fock and coherent ones. Numerical experiments demonstrate various manifestations of the quantum-classical correspondence, including dynamical chaos and fractals, which can be, in principle, observed in real experiments with atoms and photons in high finesse cavities.