The Casimir effect is a well-known macroscopic consequence of quantum vacuum fluctuations, but whereas the static effect (Casimir force) has long been observed experimentally, the dynamic Casimir effect is up to now undetected.
From an experimental viewpoint a possible detection would imply the vibration of a mirror at gigahertz frequencies. Mechanical motions at such frequencies turn out to be technically unfeasible. Here we present a different experimental scheme where mechanical motions are avoided, and the results of laboratory tests showing that the scheme is practically feasible. We think that at present this approach gives the only possibility of detecting this phenomenon.
We propose a method for the detection of a dynamical Casimir effect. Assuming that the Casimir photons are being generated in an electromagnetic cavity with a vibrating wall (dynamical Casimir effect), we consider electrons passing through the cavity to be interacting with the intracavity field. We show that the dynamical Casimir effect can be observed via the measurement of the change in the average or in the variance of the electron kinetic energy. We point out that the enhancement of the effect due to finite temperatures makes it easier to detect the Casimir photons.
The detection and characterization of a non-classical-squeezed state of light, by using two different schemes, will be presented . In the first one, in an one-dimensional cavity with moving mirror (non-stationary Casimir effect) in the principal mode, we study the photon creation rate for two modes (squeezed and coherent state) of driving field. Since the cavity with moving mirror (similar to an optomechanical system) can be considered analogue to a Kerr-like medium, so that in the second scheme, the probability amplitude for multi-photons absorption in a nonlinear (Kerr) medium will be quantu…
This work deals with the problem of photon detection generated from the mirror-induced Dynamical Casimir Effect. Particularly we are interested in measurement of those statistical characteristics of a generated intracavity field which may confirm its nonthermal properties. Here an indirect protocol for quadrature dispersion measurement is presented.
The resonant scalar particle generation for a swinging cavity resonator in the Casimir vacuum is examined. It is shown that the number of particles grows exponentially when the cavity rotates at some specific external frequency.
Motivated by a recent proposal for an experimental verification of the dynamical Casimir effect, the macroscopic electromagnetic field within a perfect cavity containing a thin slab with a time-dependent dielectric permittivity is quantized in terms of the dual potentials. For the resonance case, the number of photons created out of the vacuum due to the dynamical Casimir effect is calculated for both polarizations (TE and TM). PACS: 42.50.Lc, 03.70.+k, 42.50.Dv, 42.60.Da.
This is a brief review of different aspects of the so-called Dynamical Casimir Effect and the proposals aimed at its possible experimental realizations. A rough classification of these proposals is given and important theoretical problems are pointed out.
We report a theoretical study of the optical properties of a three-level emitter embedded in an optical cavity including the non-rotating wave terms of the light-matter interaction Hamiltonian. Rabi oscillations induced by a continuous wave drive laser are responsible for a periodic time-modulation of the effective cavity resonance, which results in a significant dynamical Casimir emission. A clear signature of the back-action effect of the dynamical Casimir emission onto the drive laser is visible as a sizable suppression of its absorption.
The static Casimir effect concerns quantum electrodynamic induced Lamb shifts in the mode frequencies and thermal free energies of condensed matter systems. Sometimes, the condensed matter constitutes the boundaries of a vacuum region. The static frequency shift effects have been calculated in the one photon loop perturbation theory approximation. The dynamic Casimir effect concerns two photon radiation processes arising from time dependent frequency modulations again computed in the one photon loop approximation. Under certain conditions the one photon loop computation may become unstable and…
An experimental set-up for the measurement of the Casimir effect at separations larger than a few microns is presented. The apparatus is based on a mechanical resonator and uses a homodyne detection technique to sense the Casimir force in the plane-parallel configuration. First measurements in the 3-10 micrometer range show an unexpected large force probably due to patch effects.
We study analytically the photon generation from vacuum due to the Dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity with a two-level atom, prepared initially in an arbitrary pure state. Performing small unitary transformations we obtain closed analytical expressions for the probability amplitudes and other important quantities in the resonant/dispersive regimes.
We show that oscillations of a homogeneous medium with constant material coefficients produce pairs of photons. Classical analysis of an oscillating medium reveals regions of parametric resonance where the electromagnetic waves are exponentially amplified. The quantum counterpart of parametric resonance is an exponentially growing number of photons in the same parameter regions. This process may be viewed as another manifestation of the dynamical Casimir effect. However, in contrast to the standard dynamical Casimir effect, photon production here takes place in the entire volume and is not due…
We theoretically investigate the dynamical Casimir effect in electrical circuits based on superconducting microfabricated waveguides with tunable boundary conditions. We propose to implement a rapid modulation of the boundary conditions by tuning the applied magnetic flux through superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) that are embedded in the waveguide circuits. We consider two circuits: (i) An open waveguide circuit that corresponds to a single mirror in free space, and (ii) a resonator coupled to a microfabricated waveguide, which corresponds to a single-sided cavity in free s…
We extend our previous work [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 100}, 183602 (2008)] on the generalization of the Casimir-Lifshitz theory to treat anisotropic magnetodielectric media, focusing on the forces between metals and magnetodielectric metamaterials and on the possibility of inferring magnetic effects by measurements of these forces. We present results for metamaterials including structures with uniaxial and biaxial magnetodielectric anisotropies, as well as for structures with isolated metallic or dielectric properties that we describe in terms of filling factors and a Maxwell Garnett approximatio…
By means of two simple examples: phase and amplitude damping, the impact of decoherence on the dynamical Casimir effect is investigated. Even without dissipating energy (i.e., pure phase damping), the amount of created particles can be diminished significantly via the coupling to the environment (reservoir theory) inducing decoherence. For a simple microscopic model, it is demonstrated that spontaneous decays within the medium generate those problems -- Rabi oscillations are far more advantageous in that respect. These findings are particularly relevant in view of a recently proposed experimen…
We consider the problem of motion-induced photon creation from quantum vacuum inside closed, perfectly conducting cavities with time-dependent geometries. These include one dimensional Fabry-Perrot resonators with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions, three dimensional cylindrical waveguides, and a spherical shell. The number of Casimir TE, TM and TEM photons is computed. We also present a classical mechanical analogue of the one dimensional dynamical Casimir effect.
We investigate quantum correlations in microwave radiation produced by the dynamical Casimir effect in a superconducting waveguide terminated and modulated by a superconducting quantum interference device. We apply nonclassicality tests and evaluate the entanglement for the predicted field states. For realistic circuit parameters, including thermal background noise, the results indicate that the produced radiation can be strictly nonclassical and can have a measurable amount of intermode entanglement. If measured experimentally, these nonclassicalilty indicators could give further evidence of …
We explore the interplay between acceleration radiation and the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in the field of superconducting quantum technologies, analyzing the generation of entanglement between two qubits by means of the DCE in several states of qubit motion. We show that the correlated absorption and emission of photons is crucial for entanglement, which in some cases can be linked to the notion of simultaneity in special relativity.
In this paper we study an optomechnical system enclosed by an optical cavity with one mirror attached to a spring as a closed quantum system. We provide a different angle of studying the phenomenons related to the dynamical Casimir effect via Feynman diagram technique. Dressing effects of phonon, photon and coupling strength are discussed. The energy shift of ground state is obtained. The dynamical Casimir effect is modeled by the scattering processes converting phonons to photons and the corresponding scattering amplitudes are computed. The force-force correlation function of the radiation pr…
We propose to use quantum coherence as ultimate proof of quantum nature in the radiation that appears by means of the Dynamical Casimir Effect in experiments with superconducting microwave waveguides. We show that, unlike previously considered measurements of quantum correlations such as entanglement and discord, quantum coherence does not require a threshold value of the external pump amplitude and is highly robust to thermal noise.
We study the dynamical Casimir effect in the presence of a finite coherence time, which is associated with a finite quality factor of the optical cavity. We use the time refraction model, where a fixed cavity with a modulated optical medium, replaces the empty cavity with a vibrating mirror. Temporal coherence is described with the help of cavity quasi-mode operators. Asymptotic expressions for the number of photon pairs generated from vacuum are derived.
In the present paper, we show that a partially reflecting static mirror with time-dependent properties can produce, via dynamical Casimir effect in the context of a massless scalar field in $1+1$ dimensions, a larger number of particles than a perfectly reflecting one. As particular limits, our results recover those found in the literature for a perfect static mirror imposing a generalized or an usual time-dependent Robin boundary condition.
We present a quantum description of photon creation via dynamical Casimir effect based on the standard Hamiltonian formulation. The particle representation is constructed in the expansion of field operators fixed with the initial modes. The Hamiltonian is presented in terms of the creation and annihilation operators with the time-varying couplings which originate from the external properties such as an oscillating boundary or a plasma mirror of a semiconductor slab. Some consideration is also made for the experimental realization with a semiconductor plasma mirror.
We demonstrate, in the regime of ultrastrong matter-field coupling, the strong connection between the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) and the performance of quantum information protocols. Our results are illustrated by means of a realistic quantum communication channel and show that the DCE is a fundamental limit for quantum computation and communication and that novel schemes are required to implement ultrafast and reliable quantum gates. Strategies to partially counteract the DCE are also discussed.
We study analytically and numerically the dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity containing two stationary 2-level atoms that interact with the resonance field mode via the Tavis-Cummings Hamiltonian. We determine the modulation frequencies for which the field and atomic excitations are generated and study the corresponding dynamical behaviors in the absence of damping. It is shown that the two-atom setup allows for monitoring of photon generation without interrupting the growth, and different entangled states can be generated during the process.
Asymptotical formulas for the photon distribution function of a quantum oscillator with time-dependent frequency and damping coefficients, interacting with a thermal reservoir, are derived in the case of a large mean number of quanta. Different regimes of excitation of an initial thermal state with an arbitrary temperature are considered. New formulas are used to predict the statistical properties of the electromagnetic field created in the experiments on the Dynamical Casimir Effect which are now under preparation.
Quantum vacuum fluctuations are a direct manifestation of Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. The dynamical Casimir effect allows for the observation of these vacuum fluctuations by turning them into real, observable photons. However, the observation of this effect in a cavity QED experiment would require the rapid variation of the length of a cavity with relativistic velocities, a daunting challenge. Here, we propose a quantum simulation of the dynamical Casimir effect using an ion chain confined in a segmented ion trap. We derive a discrete model that enables us to map the dynamics of the mu…
We discuss the prospects of employing an NbN superconducting microwave stripline resonator for studying the dynamical Casimir effect experimentally. Preliminary experimental results, in which optical illumination is employed for modulating the resonance frequencies of the resonator, show that such a system is highly promising for this purpose. Moreover, we discuss the undesirable effect of heating which results from the optical illumination, and show that degradation in noise properties can be minimized by employing an appropriate design.
Thermal effects on the creation of particles under the influence of time-dependent boundary conditions are investigated. The dominant temperature correction to the energy radiated by a moving mirror is derived by means of response theory. For a resonantly vibrating cavity the thermal effect on the number of created photons is obtained non-perturbatively. Finite temperatures can enhance the pure vacuum effect by several orders of magnitude. The relevance of finite temperature effects for the experimental verification of the dynamical Casimir effect is addressed.
We recently proposed a new approach to analyze the parametric resonance in a vibrating cavity based on the analysis of classical optical paths. This approach is used to examine various models of cavities with moving walls. We prove that our method is useful to extract easily basic physical outcome.
We consider the nonstationary circuit QED architecture, where a single artificial two-level atom interacts with a cavity field mode under external modulation of one or more system parameters. Two different approaches are employed to study the effects of Markovian dissipation on modulation-induced transitions between the atom-field dressed states: the standard master equation of Quantum Optics and the recently formulated dressed-picture master equation. We estimate the associated transition rates and show that photon generation from vacuum ("dynamical Casimir effect", DCE) and coherent photon a…
Vacuum fluctuations produce a force acting on a rigid Casimir cavity in a weak gravitational field. Such a force is here evaluated and is found to have opposite direction with respect to the gravitational acceleration; the order of magnitude for a multi-layer cavity configuration is analyzed and experimental detection is discussed, bearing in mind the current technological resources.
We show that the dynamical Casimir effect in an optomechanical system can be achieved under incoherent mechanical pumping. We adopt a fully quantum-mechanical approach for both the cavity field and the oscillating mirror. The dynamics is then evaluated using a recently-developed master equation approach in the dressed picture, including both zero and finite temperature photonic reservoirs. This analysis shows that the dynamical Casimir effect can be observed even when the mean value of the mechanical displacement is zero. This opens up new possibilities for the experimental observation of this…
We study the dynamical Casimir effect in an electromagnetic cavity containing a Kerr medium. We obtain approximate expressions for the time evolution operator as well as for the number operator in the Heisenberg representation. We have found that the generation of photons from quantum vacuum is strongly affected by the presence of the Kerr medium, sharing physical features with the case of two two-level atoms in a cavity with oscillating walls. The nonlinear medium produces a saturation effect in the photon generation which shows strong oscillations whose frequency increases with the intensity…
We study the influence of thermal Casimir-Polder forces on the near-surface trapping of cold polar molecules, with emphasis on LiH and YbF near an Au surface at room temperature. We show that for a molecule initially prepared in its electronic and rovibrational ground state, the Casimir-Polder force oscillates with the molecule-wall separation. The non-resonant force contribution and the evanescent part of the resonant force contribution almost exactly cancel at high temperature which results in a saturation of the (attractive) force in this limit. A dynamical calculation reveals how the spati…
Electromagnetic field quantization in the presence of two semi-infinite dielectrics with moving interface is investigated in $1+1$-dimensional space-time. The moving interface is modeled for small displacements and the field equation is solved perturbatively. Input-output relations and spectral distribution of emitted photons are obtained and the effect of small transitions trough the interface discussed.
The dynamical Casimir effect for a massless scalar field in 1+1-dimensions is studied numerically by solving a system of coupled first-order differential equations. The number of scalar particles created from vacuum is given by the solutions to this system which can be found by means of standard numerics. The formalism already used in a former work is derived in detail and is applied to resonant as well as off-resonant cavity oscillations.
The moving-mirror problem is microscopically formulated without invoking the external boundary conditions. The moving mirrors are described by the quantized matter field interacting with the photon field, forming dynamical cavity polaritons: photons in the cavity are dressed by electrons in the moving mirrors. The effective Hamiltonian for the polariton is derived, and corrections to the results based on the external boundary conditions are discussed.
It was predicted some time ago that the cavity dynamical Casimir effect (generation of photons from the initial vacuum state in a cavity with moving walls) might be observed if a boundary vibrates at the double frequency of some selected cavity mode. However, to register the created photons one has to couple the cavity mode with some detector. Considering the harmonic oscillator model of a detector, we analyze how different coupling regimes can affect the statistics of the created quanta.
The phenomenon of particle creation within a resonantly vibrating lossy cavity is investigated for the example of a massless scalar field at finite temperature. Leakage is provided by insertion of a dispersive mirror into a larger ideal cavity. Via the rotating wave approximation we demonstrate that for the case of parametric resonance the exponential growth of the number of created particles and the strong enhancement at finite temperatures are preserved in the presence of reasonable losses. The relevance for experimental tests of quantum radiation via the dynamical Casimir effect is addresse…
We study the photon generation from vacuum via the Dynamical Casimir Effect in a cavity containing a N-level detector in equally-spaced resonant ladder configuration or N-1 identical resonant two-level atoms. If the modulation frequency equals exactly twice the unperturbed cavity frequency, the photon growth goes on steadily for odd N, while for even N at most N-2 photons can be generated. This finding is corroborated by numerical calculations. In the limit $N\to\infty$ we obtain the harmonic oscillator model of the detector, which admits analytical results.
We analyze the introduction of dissipative effects in the study of the dynamical Casimir effect. We consider a toy model for an electromagnetic cavity that contains a semiconducting thin shell, which is irradiated with short laser pulses in order to produce periodic oscillations of its conductivity. The coupling between the quantum field in the cavity and the microscopic degrees of freedom of the shell induces dissipation and noise in the dynamics of the field. We argue that the photon creation process should be described in terms of a damped oscillator with nonlocal dissipation and colored no…
This paper addresses the excitation of vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field through periodic modulations of a refractive index and the possibility of using entanglement as a distinctive marker of the quantum nature of the phenomenon. It introduces a lossy environment and analyses its implications on the possibility of generating such an effect and measuring entanglement, concluding that it is not entirely destructive when the produced particles share the same environment.
We show two examples in which the dynamical Casimir effect can be achieved by modulating the Kerr or higher order nonlinearities. In the first case the cavity field is coupled to an arbitrary number of qubits or an harmonic oscillator via the dipole interaction. In the second case, the modulation of the nonlinearities is accompanied by the off-resonance modulation of the cavity frequency. We present the analytic description of the phenomenon and supplement it with numeric simulations, demonstrating that photons can be created from vacuum and the resulting hyper-Poissonian photon statistics is …
The Casimir effect for spherical geometry is calculated using generalized Thermofield Dynamics for the case of scalar field. Casimir force and Casimir pressure are presented. It is found that for high temperatures the Casimir force does change sign.
The dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) is the production of photons by the amplification of vacuum fluctuations. In this paper we demonstrate new resonance conditions in DCE that potentially allow the production of optical photons when the mechanical frequency is smaller than the lowest frequency of the cavity field. We consider a cavity with one mirror fixed and the other allowed to oscillate. In order to identify the region where production of photons takes place, we do a linear stability analysis and investigate the dynamic stability of the system under small fluctuations. By using a numerical …
We develop a model of a quantum field confined within a cavity with a movable wall where the position of the wall is quantized. We obtain a full description of the dynamics of both the quantum field and the confining wall depending on the initial state of the whole system. Both the reaction and back-reaction of the field on the wall, and the wall on the field, can be taken into account, as well as external driving forces on both the cavity and the wall. The model exactly reproduces the resonant cavity mode stimulation due to the periodic motion of the mirror (dynamical Casimir effect), as well…
We consider the quantum Rabi model with external time modulation of the atomic frequency, which can be employed to create excitations from the vacuum state of the electromagnetic field as a consequence of the dynamical Casimir effect. Excitations can also be systematically subtracted from the atom-field system by suitably adjusting the modulation frequency, in the so-called anti-dynamical Casimir effect (ADCE). We evaluate the quantum thermodynamical work and show that a realistic out-of-equilibrium finite-time protocol harnessing ADCE allows for work extraction from the system, whose amount c…
We consider particle creation (the Dynamical Casimir effect) in a uniformly contracting ideal one-dimensional cavity non-perturbatively. The exact expression for the energy spectrum of created particles is obtained and its dependence on parameters of the problem is discussed. Unexpectedly, the number of created particles depends on the duration of the cavity contracting non-monotonously. This is explained by quantum interference of the events of particle creation which are taking place only at the moments of acceleration and deceleration of a boundary, while stable particle states exist (and t…
We consider the nonstationary circuit QED setup in which a 3-level artificial atom in the $Δ$-configuration interacts with a single-mode cavity field of natural frequency $ω$. It is demonstrated that when some atomic energy level(s) undergoes a weak harmonic modulation, photons can be generated from vacuum via effective 1- and 3-photon transitions, while the atom remains approximately in the ground state. These phenomena occur in the dispersive regime when the modulation frequency is accurately tuned near $ω$ and $3ω$, respectively, and the generated field states exhibit strikingly different s…
Vacuum fluctuations provide a fundamental source of dissipation for systems coupled to quantum fields by radiation pressure. In the dynamical Casimir effect, accelerating neutral bodies in free space give rise to the emission of real photons while experiencing a damping force which plays the role of a radiation reaction force. Analog models where non-stationary conditions for the electromagnetic field simulate the presence of moving plates are currently under experimental investigation. A dissipative force might also appear in the case of uniform relative motion between two bodies, thus leadin…
Dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) is the name assigned to the process of generating quanta from vacuum due to an accelerated motion of macroscopic neutral bodies (mirrors) or time-modulation of cavity material properties, as well as the simulation of such processes. Here I review the theoretical results on the detection of DCE using intracavity quantum detectors, such as multi-level atoms, atomic networks and harmonic oscillators. I also stress the mathematical equivalence of this problem to the physics of optical parametric oscillators interacting with atoms or quantum wells, studied in Quantum …
The scenario of a single-mode cavity with harmonically modulated frequency is revisited in the presence of strongly detuned qubit or cyclic qutrit. It is found that when the qubit frequency is close to $3ν$ there is a peak in the photon generation rate via four-photon transitions for the modulation frequency $4ν$, where $ν$ is the average cavity frequency. Effective five-photon processes can occur for the modulation frequency $5ν$ in the presence of a cyclic qutrit, and the corresponding transition rates exhibit series of peaks. Closed analytical description is derived for the unitary evolutio…
I consider the quantum electromagnetic field in a coaxial cylindrical waveguide, such that the outer cylindrical surface has a time-dependent radius. The field propagates parallel to the axis, inside the annular region between the two cylindrical surfaces. When the mechanical frequency and the thickness of the annular region are small enough, only Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM) photons may be generated by the dynamical Casimir effect. The photon emission rate is calculated in this regime, and compared with the case of parallel plates in the limit of very short distances between the two cylin…
In this work we investigate the dynamical Casimir effect in a nonideal cavity by deriving an effective Hamiltonian. We first compute a general expression for the average number of particle creation, applicable for any law of motion of the cavity boundary. We also compute a general expression for the linear entropy of an arbitrary state prepared in a selected mode, also applicable for any law of motion of the cavity boundary. As an application of our results we have analyzed both the average number of particle creation and linear entropy within a particular oscillatory motion of the cavity boun…
We theoretically propose and investigate a feasible experimental scheme for the realization of the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE) in a hybrid optomechanical cavity with a moving end mirror containing an interacting cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC). We show that in the red-detuned regime of cavity optomechanics together with the weak optomechanical coupling limit by \textit{coherent} modulation of the \textit{s}-wave scattering frequency of the BEC and the mechanical spring coefficient of the mechanical oscillator (MO), the mechanical and atomic quantum vacuum fluctuations are parame…
The transient Casimir-Polder force on a two-level atom introduced into a three-dimensional, inhomogeneous, generally non-reciprocal environment is evaluated using non-Markovian Weisskopf-Wigner theory in the strong and weak coupling regimes. Ground-state and excited atoms are considered as two separate initial-value problems, and both the short-time and long-time atomic population and force are evaluated. The results are compared with various Markov approximation of the Weisskopf-Wigner theory, and with previous Markov results from the Heisenberg picture.
We present a general analytical approach to investigate relativistic corrections in the dynamical Casimir effect (DCE). Particularly, we discuss the behavior of the additional frequency bands that appear in the spectral distribution of the created particles when the first relativistic corrections are taken into account. We do that in the context of circuit QED, by analyzing the setup used in the first measurement of the DCE, where a system with a time-dependent boundary condition simulates the mechanical motion of a single mirror in 1+1 dimensions. Our method is applicable to a large class of …
