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# Generation of entangled states of two atoms inside a leaky cavity

## I Introduction

Entanglement has long been considered a fundamental property in quantum theory Schrödinger (1935); Einstein et al. (1935); Bell (1965). It has gained renewed interest due to its potential applications in quantum computations and information in recent years, and is generally considered as the corner-stone of this field (see, e.g., Refs. Bouwmeester et al. (2000); Nielsen and Chuang (2000); Raimond et al. (2001) and references therein). While entanglement can be generated by a lot of different implements such as solid-state devices Bouchiat et al. (1999); Bertoni et al. (2000); Friedman et al. (2000); van der Wal et al. (2000), nuclear magnetic resonance in liquid samples Gershenfeld and Chuang (1997); Jones et al. (1998), and ion trap Monroe et al. (1995); Turchette et al. (1998); Sackett et al. (2000), it is most conveniently realized by photons, e.g., in parametric down-conversion Yamamoto et al. (2003); Abouraddy et al. (2001). However, though being ideal carriers of quantum information, photons cannot serve as convenient storage media. The storage of information is much better implemented with atoms. In this sense, cavity quantum electrodynamics (CQED) provides a perfect stage for the interaction of information carriers and depository to take place Lange and Kimble (2000); Rauschenbeutel et al. (1999); Maître et al. (1997). With the advance in CQED technologies, some proposals have also been made to generate entangled states of atoms in optical and microwave cavities Plenio et al. (1999); Beige et al. (2000); Pachos and Walther (2002); Sørensen and Mølmer (2003); Hagley et al. (1997); Duan and Kimble (2003), many of which employ the leakage of the cavity not only as a channel for information passage, but also as the crucial element for generating entanglement Braun (2002); Plenio et al. (1999). In addition, state projection techniques using quantum measurement have also been proposed to generate entanglement in a probabilistic manner Sørensen and Mølmer (2003); Duan and Kimble (2003).

Recently, Hong and Lee have proposed a scheme to generate entangled atoms inside a leaky cavity in a “quasi-deterministic” manner Hong and Lee (2002). In their model, which is similar to that in Ref. Plenio et al. (1999), two $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type three-level atoms, initially prepared in their ground states, may become maximally entangled after interacting with a single cavity photon. The polarization of the output photon, serving as an indicator of the atomic state, is then measured, and generation of entangled atomic state is successful if the photon carries the right polarization. Adopting the master equation approach, they numerically showed that under the optimal condition in which the ratio of the coupling strengths of the two channels is $`\sqrt{2}`$, the maximum probability of success in each operation is $`50\%`$. They further argued that a unit probability of success can be achieved by introducing the output photon to the leaky cavity repeatedly. Through the application of this automatic feedback scheme, the two atoms in the cavity are entangled in a “quasi-deterministic” manner.

The method proposed by Hong and Lee is appealing. However, their scheme is still probabilistic for each single trial. It is therefore interesting to study whether the probability of success in each trial could be increased. The master equation approach adopted in Ref. Hong and Lee (2002) has limited further development in this direction. In addition, they obtained the optimal condition and hence the maximum probability by direct inspection on the numerical results. In the present paper, we first develop a rigorous analytic solution to their model and in turn provide a physical interpretation for the optimal condition mentioned above. We are then able to show explicitly that the upper bound $`50\%`$ of the probability of success is an intrinsic nature of their scheme that makes use of a cavity photon.

Furthermore, by generalizing the initial photon state to consider photons injected into the cavity with certain spectra, we find that the probability of success in each trial can be increased and larger than $`50\%`$. It is worthwhile to note that the master equation approach employed by Hong and Lee in Ref. Hong and Lee (2002) is not a proper description for the injected and output photons, which are usually characterized by wave packets with certain durations or, equivalently, by their respective spectral functions. The master equation approach, on the other hand, deals mainly with the “decay” of photons existing (or created) in the cavity. A photon that has already leaked out of the cavity is considered as a “decay” event and is no longer part of the system. As a consequence, their approach fails to describe the quantum states of the injected and output photons and is therefore deemed inappropriate in this situation.

In this paper, we adopt the continuous frequency mode approach that considers the cavity and its environment as a single entity to quantize the entire system Ley and Loudon (1987); Lai et al. (1988); Gea-Banacloche et al. (1990); Law et al. (2000). This enables us to study a photon with an arbitrary spectral function. We find that the probability of success in each operation depends crucially on the spectral function of the injected photon. In general, the probability can be increased to well over $`50\%`$. As long as spontaneous decay can be neglected, with suitably chosen spectral function of the photon, deterministic entanglement generation can be realized irrespective of the leakage rate of the cavity. Remarkably, an almost unit probability of success can be obtained for realistic CQED setups and photon packets.

The structure of our paper is as follows: In Sec. II, we introduce a proper set of spatial mode functions — the continuous frequency modes, in terms of which the electromagnetic field is quantized. The interaction Hamiltonian and the evolution of the atoms governed by it are discussed in Sec. III and IV, respectively. In Sec. V, the generation of entanglement is studied for two cases with different input states, namely, a cavity photon Lang et al. (1973); Law et al. (2000); van der Plank and Suttorp (1996) and an arbitrary injected photon. We conclude the main features of our scheme in Sec. VI.

## II Continuous frequency modes

In the following discussion we adopt the continuous frequency mode quantization scheme to analyze optical processes taking place inside a leaky optical cavity Ley and Loudon (1987); Lai et al. (1988); Gea-Banacloche et al. (1990); Law et al. (2000). Hence photons are represented by quantum states $`|k_L`$ and $`|k_R`$, which are characterized by a continuous wave number $`k`$, and the polarization ($`L`$ and $`R`$) of the photon. For definiteness and without loss of generality, we consider in this paper a one-sided optical cavity as shown in Fig. 1, which has length $`l`$ and is bounded by two mirrors. The left mirror at $`x=0`$ is perfectly reflecting; the right mirror at $`x=l`$ is partially transparent and characterized by frequency-dependent reflection and transmission coefficients $`r(k)`$ and $`t(k)`$. The spatial mode functions $`U_k(x)`$ corresponding to quantum states $`|k_{L(R)}`$ are given by

$$U_k(x)=\{\begin{array}{c}I(k)\mathrm{sin}kx\\ e^{ikx}+R(k)e^{ikx}\end{array}\begin{array}{ccc}& & \end{array}\begin{array}{c}0<xl,\\ l<x<\mathrm{},\end{array}$$
(1)
where

$`I(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2it}{1+re^{2ikl}}},`$ (2)
$`R(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{rt+re^{2ikl}}{1+re^{2ikl}}}.`$ (3)
Notice that $`|R(k)|=1`$, as required by conservation of energy. Standard Sturm-Liouville type orthogonality integral leads to the general normalization condition

$$_0^{\mathrm{}}ϵ(x)U_k(x)U_k^{}^{}(x)𝑑x=2\pi \delta (kk^{}),$$
(4)
where $`ϵ(x)`$ is the position-dependent relative permittivity. For example, if an infinitely thin dielectric mirror is placed at $`x=l`$, then $`ϵ(x)=1+\zeta \delta (xl)`$, where $`\zeta `$ determines the finesse of the mirror Ley and Loudon (1987).

The quantization of the field is hence accomplished by decomposing the field operator $`\widehat{A}(x,t)`$ into these continuous frequency modes and by introducing the usual annihilation (creation) operator $`\widehat{a}_{k\mu }`$ ($`\widehat{a}_{k\mu }^{}`$), with $`\mu =L,R`$ being the polarization index. These operators satisfy the standard commutation relation $`[\widehat{a}_{k\mu },\widehat{a}_{k^{}\mu ^{}}^{}]=\delta _{\mu \mu ^{}}\delta (kk^{})`$. The result reads:

$$\widehat{A}(x,t)=\underset{\mu =L,R}{}_0^{\mathrm{}}k^{1/2}\left[U_k(x)\widehat{a}_{k\mu }e^{ikt}+U_k^{}(x)\widehat{a}_{k\mu }^{}e^{ikt}\right]𝑑k.$$
(5)
Hereafter we adopt the cgs units and take $`\mathrm{}=c=1`$.

The coefficients $`I(k)`$ and $`R(k)`$ possess poles $`\stackrel{~}{k}_n`$, which are roots of the equation $`1+re^{2ikl}=0`$. As long as $`r(k)`$ and $`t(k)`$ are slowly varying functions of $`k`$, the roots of the above equation are approximately given by: $`\stackrel{~}{k}_n=k_ni\kappa _n/2`$, where

$`k_n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(2n+1)\pi \mathrm{arg}\left[r(k_n)\right]}{2l}},`$ (6)
$`\kappa _n`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{log}|r(k_n)|}{l}},`$ (7)
and $`n=0,\pm 1,\pm 2,\mathrm{}`$ . These complex frequencies define the quasi-modes of the cavity Ley and Loudon (1987); Lai et al. (1988); Gea-Banacloche et al. (1990); Ching et al. (1998). Figure 2 shows a sketch of $`|U_k(x_0)|^2`$ versus $`k`$ at a point $`x_0`$ inside the cavity. Each peak in the figure corresponds to a quasi-mode of the cavity. For large $`n`$, the separations and widths of the modes can be taken as constants given by $`\pi /l`$ and $`\kappa `$, respectively. The physical significance of these quasi-modes is that for a “good cavity”, where $`|r|1`$, the mode function is negligibly small except at frequencies $`kk_n`$. In fact, it can be shown that the electrodynamics inside the cavity is completely describable in terms of these quasi-modes Ching et al. (1998). In the following, we shall make use of this formalism to discuss the interaction between the atoms and the quantized photon field.

## III Atom-field interaction

We consider two identical $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type atoms $`A`$ and $`B`$ located near the center of a one-sided cavity as shown in Fig. 1. The separation of the atoms is assumed to be much smaller than the wavelength of the field in interest. The two ground states and the excited state are, respectively, denoted by $`|L_\alpha `$, $`|R_\alpha `$ and $`|e_\alpha `$, where $`\alpha =A`$, $`B`$ refers to atom $`A`$ and $`B`$. The excited state couples with the ground state $`|L_\alpha `$ ($`|R_\alpha `$) by emitting a $`|k_L`$ ($`|k_R`$) mode photon. In our model, we assume that the ground states are stable, and the spontaneous decay rate of the excited states into non-cavity modes is negligible compared with the cavity leakage rate $`\kappa `$. We shall use the notation $`|\mu _A\mu _B;k_\mu `$ for states with two ground-state atoms and a single photon, where $`\mu _A`$, $`\mu _B`$, $`\mu =L`$, $`R`$ and the first and second positions are assigned to atom $`A`$ and $`B`$, respectively. States with an excited-state and a ground-state atom will similarly be denoted by $`|e_A\mu _B;0`$ and $`|\mu _Ae_B;0`$, where $`|0`$ is the vacuum state of the field.

Assuming that the two ground states are degenerate and the energies of the ground and excited states are zero and $`\omega _e`$, respectively, in terms of the continuous frequency mode basis, the Hamiltonian can be written as

$`\widehat{H}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \underset{\alpha =A,B}{}}\omega _e|e_\alpha e_\alpha |+{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑k{\displaystyle \underset{\mu =L,R}{}}\omega _ka_{k\mu }^{}a_{k\mu }`$ (8)
$`+{\displaystyle _0^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑k{\displaystyle \underset{\genfrac{}{}{0pt}{}{\alpha =A,B}{\mu =L,R}}{}}g_\mu (k)a_{k\mu }|e_\alpha \mu _\alpha |+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,`$
where the function $`g(k)`$ is proportional to the mode function $`U_k(x)`$ evaluated at the position of the atoms, $`x_al/2`$.

In the present paper, the atomic frequency is assumed to be close to one of the cavity quasi-mode frequencies given by Eq. (6). Therefore, one can expand the mode functions around the resonance frequency and obtain the so-called single mode approximation result Law et al. (2000); Lang et al. (1973); van der Plank and Suttorp (1996):

$$g_\mu (k)=\frac{\sqrt{\kappa /2\pi }\lambda _\mu e^{i\theta _\mu }}{kk_c+i\kappa /2},$$
(9)
where $`k_c`$ and $`\kappa `$ are, respectively, the frequency and the decay rate of the quasi-mode in resonance, and $`\theta _\mu `$ is a trivial phase angle. Besides,

$$\lambda _\mu ^2=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}|g_\mu (k)|^2𝑑k$$
(10)
is a measure of the coupling strength that depends on the dipole moment and the location of the atom. Also notice that within the single mode approximation, the lower limit of the frequency domain will hereafter be extended from $`0`$ to $`\mathrm{}`$, as shown in Eq. (10).

## IV Analytic solution

The system is initially prepared in the state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})|LL;k_L^{},$$
(11)
where $`f(k^{})`$ is the spectral function of a one-photon state in the continuous frequency mode representation, satisfying the normalization condition:

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}|f(k^{})|^2𝑑k^{}=1.$$
(12)
The explicit form of the injected photon will be specified later.

We introduce an essential state basis to simplify the dynamics of the two atoms as follows. The frequency and polarization of the photon are two independent degrees of freedom of the Hilbert space. Restricted to single excitation, one of the two atoms may be excited while the other can be in $`|L`$ or $`|R`$, and thus there are four distinct states with a single excited atom. When the two atoms are in the ground states ($`|L`$ and $`|R`$ states), the polarization of the emitted photon can be either $`L`$ or $`R`$, giving rise to a total of eight distinct states for each frequency. However, if we are only interested in the evolution with the specific initial state given by Eq. (11), the dimension of the subspace involved is greatly reduced. One of the atoms in the initial state $`|LL;k_L^{}`$ may absorb the photon and the state evolves into

$$|E=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|eL;0+|Le;0\right).$$
(13)
When the excited atom de-excites by emitting another photon of wave number $`k`$ ($`kk^{}`$ in general), the resulting state may be $`|LL;k_L`$ or $`|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R`$, where

$$|\mathrm{\Phi }=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}}\left(|LR+|RL\right)$$
(14)
is a Bell state of the two atoms — the goal of the current discussion. Hence, the dynamics of our system is adequately described by transitions between the excited state $`|E`$ and the single-photon states $`|LL;k_L`$ or $`|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R`$. Considering hereafter an initial state specified by Eq. (11), we obtain an effective Hamiltonian within the above-mentioned subspace:

$`\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _e|EE|+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑kk\left(|LL;k_LLL;k_L|+|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R\mathrm{\Phi };k_R|\right)`$ (15)
$`+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑k\left(\sqrt{2}g_L(k)|ELL;k_L|+g_R(k)|E\mathrm{\Phi };k_R|\right)+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}..`$
It is noteworthy that the dynamics of the current system, governed by $`\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}`$, bears strong resemblance to that of a single $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type three-level system in an optical cavity, with coupling strengths of the two channels being in the ratio of $`\sqrt{2}\lambda _L`$ to $`\lambda _R`$. The factor $`\sqrt{2}`$ can be explained as follows. First, while both atoms in state $`|LL;k_L`$ can interact with the photon, one of the two atoms in state $`|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R`$ is only a spectator. Second, the collective quantum effect of the state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }`$ contributes an enhancement factor $`\sqrt{2}`$. These two effects together give an overall $`\sqrt{2}`$ factor. Hence, if the coupling strengths $`\lambda _L`$ and $`\lambda _R`$ are in the ratio of $`1:\sqrt{2}`$, satisfying the optimal condition discovered in Ref. Hong and Lee (2002), the original two-atom model reduces to a symmetric three-level system. Interestingly enough, it is well known that a resonantly driven symmetric $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type atom located in an ideal cavity can exhibit perfect oscillations between its two ground states. We shall see that these analogies do shed light on our current investigation.

To simplify the calculations, we perform another basis transformation to reduce the model to a two-level system. By defining

$`|\psi _1(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{V(k)}}\left(\sqrt{2}g_L^{}(k)|LL;k_L+g_R^{}(k)|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R\right),`$ (16)
$`|\psi _2(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{1}{V(k)}}\left(g_R(k)|LL;k_L\sqrt{2}g_L(k)|\mathrm{\Phi };k_R\right),`$ (17)
where

$$V(k)=\sqrt{2|g_L(k)|^2+|g_R(k)|^2},$$
(18)
one of the ground states is turned into a dark state $`|\psi _2(k)`$, which does not take part in the interaction. The Hamiltonian can thus be written as

$$\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{eff}}=\widehat{H}_0+\widehat{V}+\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{dark}},$$
(19)
where

$`\widehat{H}_0`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _e|EE|+{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑kk|\psi _1(k)\psi _1(k)|,`$ (20)
$`\widehat{V}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑kV(k)|E\psi _1(k)|+\mathrm{h}.\mathrm{c}.,`$ (21)
$`\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{dark}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑kk|\psi _2(k)\psi _2(k)|,`$ (22)
with $`\widehat{H}_{\mathrm{dark}}`$ being the free Hamiltonian of the dark states $`|\psi _2(k)`$.

To study the output state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{out}}`$ of the system subject to an arbitrary state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}`$ at $`t=0`$, we adopt the resolvent method (see, e.g Ref. Cohen-Tannoudji et al. (1992)) to deal with transitions between states with different $`k`$’s. Remarkably, if the trivial evolution of the dark state is discarded, the dynamics governed by the effective Hamiltonian is ostensibly analogous to that of a two-level atom interacting with a single quasi-mode. To simplify the calculation, the dark states will be ignored when solving the system using resolvent method.

The resolvent of the Hamiltonian $`\widehat{H}_0+\widehat{V}`$ is given by

$$\widehat{G}(\omega )=\frac{1}{\omega \widehat{H}_0\widehat{V}},$$
(23)
with $`\omega `$ being a complex variable. It yields the retarded Green’s function, $`\theta (t)\mathrm{exp}[i(\widehat{H}_0+\widehat{V})t]`$, through an integral transformation:

$$\theta (t)\mathrm{exp}[i(\widehat{H}_0+\widehat{V})t]=\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}\frac{i}{2\pi }_{\mathrm{}+iϵ}^{\mathrm{}+iϵ}\widehat{G}(\omega )e^{i\omega t}𝑑\omega .$$
(24)
In the following discussion, unless otherwise stated, we assume $`t>0`$ and therefore identify the retarded Green’s function with the evolution operator $`\widehat{U}(t,0)\mathrm{exp}[i(\widehat{H}_0+\widehat{V})t]`$.

To evaluate the matrix elements of the resolvent, we partition the Hilbert space into two complementary parts with projection operators $`\widehat{P}=|EE|`$ and $`\widehat{Q}=\mathrm{𝟏}\widehat{P}`$. The projection of $`\widehat{G}(\omega )`$ by $`\widehat{P}`$ is given by Cohen-Tannoudji et al. (1992):

$$\widehat{P}\widehat{G}(\omega )\widehat{P}=\frac{\widehat{P}}{\omega \widehat{P}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{P}\widehat{P}\widehat{R}(\omega )\widehat{P}},$$
(25)
where $`\widehat{R}(\omega )`$ is the level-shift operator defined as

$$\widehat{R}(\omega )=\widehat{V}+\widehat{V}\frac{\widehat{Q}}{\omega \widehat{Q}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{Q}\widehat{Q}\widehat{V}\widehat{Q}}\widehat{V}.$$
(26)
It is then straightforward to show that

$`E|\widehat{R}(\omega )|E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{V(k)^2}{\omega k}}𝑑k`$ (27)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2}{\omega k_c+i\kappa /2}}.`$
Hence,

$`E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\omega +i\kappa /2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }\omega \delta _e)(\mathrm{\Delta }\omega +i\kappa /2)2\lambda _L^2\lambda _R^2}}`$ (28)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Delta }\omega +i\kappa /2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }\omega \omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }\omega \omega _{})}},`$ (29)
with

$`\mathrm{\Delta }\omega `$ $`=`$ $`\omega k_c,`$ (30)
$`\delta _e`$ $`=`$ $`\omega _ek_c,`$ (31)
and

$$\omega _\pm =\frac{\delta _ei\kappa /2}{2}\pm \sqrt{\left(\frac{\delta _e+i\kappa /2}{2}\right)^2+2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2}.$$
(32)
In our model, the atoms are in ground state at the beginning and the end. Hence the above amplitude is not of direct interest. However, this result is essential for the evaluation of the ground-state amplitudes, which is our major objective. The projection of the resolvent by $`\widehat{Q}`$ is

$`\widehat{Q}\widehat{G}(\omega )\widehat{Q}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{Q}}{\omega \widehat{Q}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{Q}\widehat{Q}\widehat{V}\widehat{Q}}}`$ (33)
$`+{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{Q}}{\omega \widehat{Q}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{Q}\widehat{Q}\widehat{V}\widehat{Q}}}\widehat{V}{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{P}}{\omega \widehat{P}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{P}\widehat{P}\widehat{R}(\omega )\widehat{P}}}`$
$`\widehat{V}{\displaystyle \frac{\widehat{Q}}{\omega \widehat{Q}\widehat{H}_0\widehat{Q}\widehat{Q}\widehat{V}\widehat{Q}}},`$
yielding the ground-state matrix elements

$$\psi _1(k)|\widehat{G}(\omega )|\psi _1(k^{})=\frac{\delta (kk^{})}{\omega k}+\frac{V(k)V(k^{})}{(\omega k)(\omega k^{})}E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E.$$
(34)
These expressions are generally valid Res , and can be applied to any initial photon states. In addition, when we are interested in an initial state $`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}`$ satisfying the scattering state condition:

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}\widehat{V}e^{i\widehat{H}_0t}|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=0& & & \mathrm{for}& t0,\end{array}$$
(35)
then it can be shown that:

$`\psi _1(k)|\widehat{U}(t,0)|\psi _1(k^{})`$ $`=`$ $`\delta (kk^{})e^{ikt}\left[12\pi iV(k)^2E|\widehat{G}(k)|E\right],`$ (36)
$`=`$ $`\delta (kk^{})e^{ikt}e^{i\delta _\mathrm{s}(k)},`$ (37)
with $`\delta _\mathrm{s}(k)`$ being a $`k`$-dependent real phase shift. Equation (37) is obtained by noticing that the module of the last factor in Eq. (36) is one. While details of the proof will be given in the appendix, the physical meaning of Eq. (35) is obvious. It simply implies that the atoms do not experience the field of the injected photon as long as $`t0`$. Equations (36) and (37) become useful when we consider an injected photon prepared in a scattering state.

## V Generation of entanglement

After interacting with the atoms, the photon leaks out of the cavity, and its polarization can be detected, e.g. by a quarter wave plate and a polarization beam splitter. The atoms inside the cavity will then be projected into either the direct product state $`|LL`$ or the maximally entangled state $`\mathrm{\Phi }=(|LR+|RL)/\sqrt{2}`$, depending, respectively, on whether an $`L`$ or $`R`$ mode photon is detected. In the following, we consider two different cases where the photon in the initial state is (i) prepared in a cavity mode; and (ii) injected from outside with a spectral function satisfying Eq. (35).

### V.1 Cavity photon

A cavity photon is identified with a quasi-mode photon as defined in Ref. van der Plank and Suttorp (1996), which is initially created inside the cavity and leaks gradually to the surroundings. In mathematical terms, a cavity photon is characterized by the spectral function:

$$f(k^{})=f_c(k^{})=\frac{1}{\lambda _\mu }g_\mu ^{}(k^{}),$$
(38)
which corresponds to the cavity line shape. Equations (38), (16), and (17) then lead directly to

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}\frac{f_c(k^{})}{V(k^{})}\left(\sqrt{2}g_L(k^{})|\psi _1(k^{})+g_R^{}(k^{})|\psi _2(k^{})\right).$$
(39)
The evolution of the dark states $`|\psi _2(k^{})`$ is trivial, whereas the resolvent method gives the Fourier transform of the time evolution of the states $`|\psi _1(k^{})`$. As photon detections are carried out at the end, the relevant matrix elements of the resolvent are those given by Eq. (34). Hence,

$$\psi _1(k)|\widehat{G}(\omega )|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{\omega k}\left(\frac{g_L(k)f_c(k)}{V(k)}+\frac{\lambda _LE|\widehat{G}(\omega )|EV(k)}{\omega k_c+i\kappa /2}\right),$$
(40)
and from inverse Fourier transform we obtain, as $`t\mathrm{}`$,

$$\psi _1(k)|\widehat{U}(t,0)|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=\sqrt{2}\left(\frac{g_L(k)f_c(k)}{V(k)}+\frac{\lambda _LV(k)}{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}\right)e^{ikt},$$
(41)
where all the transients have been neglected, and

$$\mathrm{\Delta }k=kk_c.$$
(42)
Notice that although we are looking at the long time behavior, Eqs. (36) and (37) do not apply to this situation because the initial state given by $`f_c(k^{})`$ does not satisfy Eq. (35).

The resolvent method only solves the dynamics of the states $`|\psi _1(k)`$. The overall output state also includes the contributions of the dark states, in which a trivial phase factor $`e^{ikt}`$ is multiplied. With the dark state included again, the output state in the long time limit is given by

$`|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{out}}`$ $`=`$ $`|LL{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ke^{ikt}f_c(k){\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\delta _e)(\mathrm{\Delta }k+i\kappa /2)\lambda _R^2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}}|k_L`$ (43)
$`+|\mathrm{\Phi }{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}𝑑ke^{ikt}f_c(k){\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}\lambda _L\lambda _Re^{i\mathrm{\Delta }_{LR}}}{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}}|k_R,`$
where

$$\mathrm{\Delta }_{LR}=\theta _L\theta _R.$$
(44)
If one then detects the photon in the $`L`$ ($`R`$) mode, the atomic state is projected into the non-entangled state $`|LL`$ (the maximally entangled state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }`$), with respective probabilities $`P_L`$ and $`P_R`$ given by:

$`P_L`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\left|f_c(k){\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\delta _e)(\mathrm{\Delta }k+i\kappa /2)\lambda _R^2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}}\right|^2𝑑k`$ (45)
$`=`$ $`1{\displaystyle \frac{4\lambda _L^2\lambda _R^2(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2+\kappa ^2/2)}{(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2)\left[(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2+\kappa ^2/2)^2+\delta _e^2\kappa ^2\right]}},`$
$`P_R`$ $`=`$ $`2\lambda _L^2\lambda _R^2{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\left|{\displaystyle \frac{f_c(k)}{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}}\right|^2𝑑k`$ (46)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{4\lambda _L^2\lambda _R^2(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2+\kappa ^2/2)}{(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2)\left[(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2+\kappa ^2/2)^2+\delta _e^2\kappa ^2\right]}}.`$
If the resonance condition is satisfied, i.e., $`\delta _e=0`$, we have

$$P_R=\frac{4\lambda _L^2\lambda _R^2}{(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2)(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2+\kappa ^2/2)}.$$
(47)
In strong coupling regime, where $`\lambda _L`$, $`\lambda _R\kappa `$,

$$P_R\left[\frac{2\lambda _L\lambda _R}{(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2)}\right]^2.$$
(48)
One can easily prove that

$$P_R\frac{1}{2}$$
(49)
and equality holds when

$$\lambda _R=\sqrt{2}\lambda _L.$$
(50)
Figure 3 shows the results of $`P_R`$ versus $`\lambda _L/\lambda _R`$ when $`\delta _e=0`$, and for different cavity leakage rates $`\kappa /\lambda _R=0`$, $`\sqrt{2}/3`$, and $`7.5`$. One can see that the probability depends strongly on the cavity leakage rate. For finite $`\kappa `$, $`P_R`$ does not attain maximum at $`\lambda _R=\sqrt{2}\lambda _L`$ exactly and the maximum value cannot reach $`1/2`$. In fact, from Eq. (47), we have,

$$P_R\frac{2}{\left(1+\sqrt{1+(\frac{\kappa }{2\lambda _L})^2}\right)^2}<\frac{1}{2}$$
(51)
and equality holds when

$$\lambda _R=\sqrt{2}\left[1+\left(\frac{\kappa }{2\lambda _L}\right)^2\right]^{\frac{1}{4}}\lambda _L.$$
(52)
The above results can be better understood by studying the analog of a “three-level system” in a perfect cavity. As mentioned previously, our two-atom model reduces to a single three-level symmetric system if Eq. (50) is satisfied. It is well known that such a symmetric “three-level system”, initially in one of its ground states, oscillates between the two ground states. When $`\delta _e=0`$, the oscillations are sinusoidal and complete. When there is detuning, the evolution becomes more complicated and perfect population transfer from one ground state to the other cannot take place. However, it can be shown that when the couplings of the two channels are equal (Eq. (50) in our model), the time-averaged populations of the two ground states are equal, independent of the magnitude of detuning. Moreover, as the cavity under consideration is leaky, the probability of detecting an $`L`$ (or $`R`$) photon outside the cavity is expected to be proportional to the time the system dwelling in each of the ground states. For the case of a good cavity, the upper bound $`50\%`$ of the probability of success is easy to understand, as the system spends equal time on both of the ground states in this limit. Hence when the photon leaks outside the cavity, the atom has equal probability to decay into an entangled state or a direct product state.

In Ref. Hong and Lee (2002), the hyperfine levels of a cesium atom studied in Ref. Lange and Kimble (2000) were quoted as examples for realistic implementation of their scheme. Two different sets of atomic levels are studied. In both cases, $`\kappa /\lambda _R=\sqrt{2}/3`$, while $`\lambda _L/\lambda _R=1`$ or $`\sqrt{5/6}`$. The numerical results for $`P_R`$ they obtained are $`0.43`$ and $`0.45`$, respectively, which agree with our analytical solution shown by the corresponding curve in Fig. 3. In fact, from Eq. (47), our analytic results are $`P_R=3/7`$ and $`9/20`$, respectively.

One of the parameters in Fig. 3, $`\kappa /\lambda _R=7.5`$, is taken from a real CQED setup in Ref. Turchette et al. (1995). The parameters of the setup, when denoted by the corresponding notations in our model, are given by $`(\lambda _{L(R)},\kappa ,\gamma )/2\pi =(20,150,5)\mathrm{MHz}`$, where $`\gamma `$ is the transverse decay rate of the excited state pro . (The effect of spontaneous decay has so far been assumed negligible in our study. We shall return to discuss this point in Sec. V.2.) From Fig. 3, it is observed that in this case, the Rabi oscillation frequency is not high enough compared to the cavity leakage rate, the bias due to the initial state cannot be erased and this lowers the probability of success for poorer cavities. As can be concluded from Eq. (51), that in the weak coupling limit $`\lambda _{L(R)}\kappa `$, $`P_R0`$, because there is effectively no oscillation at all before the photon decays. Hence the scheme using cavity photon is implausible for weak coupling cases. However, as will be shown in Sec. V.2, the entanglement scheme still works nicely in the weak coupling regime with an injected photon.

### V.2 Injected photon packet

The motivation to switch from cavity photons to injected photons is two-fold. First, it is practically more realistic to consider a photon injected into the cavity than one that already exists inside. Second, inspired by the “three-level system” analogy discussed in Sec. V.1, it is believed that an injected photon with a duration longer than the cavity leakage time may be able to “drive” the system into the entangled state with a higher efficiency. We shall see that by including general initial photon states other than cavity photon, one may also eliminate the requirement for strong coupling.

Consider an injected photon with a spectral function $`f(k^{})`$ satisfying Eq. (35). From Eqs. (36)-(37), and following similar arguments outlined in Sec. V.1, we have

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{out}}=|LL_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ke^{ikt}f(k)C_L(k)|k_L|\mathrm{\Phi }_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑ke^{ikt}f(k)C_R(k)|k_R,$$
(53)
where

$`C_L(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{(\mathrm{\Delta }k\delta _e)(\mathrm{\Delta }k^2+\kappa ^2/4)\mathrm{\Delta }k(\lambda _R^2+2\lambda _L^2)+i\kappa (\lambda _R^22\lambda _L^2)/2}{(\mathrm{\Delta }ki\kappa /2)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}},`$ (54)
$`C_R(k)`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{\sqrt{2}ie^{i\mathrm{\Delta }_{LR}}\kappa \lambda _L\lambda _R}{(\mathrm{\Delta }ki\kappa /2)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _+)(\mathrm{\Delta }k\omega _{})}}.`$ (55)
It is important to note that perfect transfer occurs at the photon frequencies

$$\mathrm{\Delta }k=0,\pm \sqrt{4\lambda _L^2\kappa ^2/4}$$
(56)
because the corresponding amplitudes,

$`C_L(k)`$ $`=`$ $`0,`$ (57)
$`C_R(k)`$ $`=`$ $`e^{i\mathrm{\Delta }_{LR}},`$ (58)
as long as $`\delta _e=0`$ and Eq. (50) are satisfied. Therefore, we have an almost unit probability of generating the entangled state $`|\mathrm{\Phi }`$ when $`f(k)`$ is strongly peaked at one of the frequencies defined in Eq. (56). The efficiency of entanglement generation depends on the spectral width of the injected photon packet, compared with the width of the function $`C_R(k)`$ around the peaks. Also notice that detuning only shifts the frequencies in Eq. (56), and our scheme remains plausible by adjusting the peak frequency of the injected photon.

We first study an injected photon packet with a complex Lorentzian spectral function centered at $`k_c`$, and with its pole on the upper half plane:

$$f(k^{})=\underset{\tau \mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\sqrt{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}/2\pi }}{k^{}k_ci\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}/2}e^{ik^{}\tau }.$$
(59)
Here the parameter $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}`$ is the spectral width of the input photon packet and $`\tau `$ determines the initial distance of the photon packet from the cavity. It can be shown that the scattering state condition, Eq. (35), is satisfied under the limit $`\tau \mathrm{}`$ in Eq. (59), and hence the probability of obtaining the entangled state is given by

$$P_R=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}|f(k)C_R(k)|^2𝑑k.$$
(60)
Notice that $`P_R`$ depends only on the module of the spectral function $`|f(k)|`$, hence an injected photon with spectral function

$$f(k^{})=\frac{\sqrt{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}/2\pi }}{k^{}k_c+i\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}/2}$$
(61)
satisfying Eq. (35) yields the same probability. An injected photon with spectral function in the form shown in Eq. (61) can be obtained, for example, by injecting the leaked photon emitted by an atom inside another Fabry-Perot cavity. The number of peaks of the spectral function depends on the parameters of the cavity and the atom.

Figure 4 shows the dependence of $`P_R`$ on the spectral width of the injected photon. It is shown that in general our method can increase the probability of success to well over $`50\%`$ when the width of the injected photon is sufficiently small compared with the relaxation rates of the system. The probability can even approach one in the limiting case of a quasi-monochromatic injected photon.

We point out that in the strong coupling regime, $`\lambda _{L(R)}\kappa `$, the relaxation time of the system is $`1/\kappa `$. Therefore a high probability of success can be achieved when $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}<\kappa `$. An example is shown by the $`\lambda _L/\kappa =2.5`$ curve in Fig. 4. On the other hand, in the bad cavity limit, $`\lambda _{L(R)}\kappa `$, the relaxation rate of the system is modified to $`(2\lambda _L^2+\lambda _R^2)/\kappa `$. This explains why the $`\lambda _L/\kappa =0.13`$ curve in Fig. 4 requires a smaller $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}`$ in order to obtain a higher probability of success.

It is useful to note that the curve in Fig. 4 with $`\lambda _L/\kappa =0.13`$ corresponds to a realistic situation using the parameters in the setup in Ref. Turchette et al. (1995). For the cavity photon scheme discussed in the previous section, the probability of success is less than $`5\%`$. However, using our injected photon scheme, a probability near $`50\%`$ can still be obtained even if $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}/\kappa 0.3`$ (see Fig. 4).

From Fig. 4, one observes that an intermediate strength of coupling $`\lambda _L/\kappa =0.25`$ yields best results. This particular value of the parameter is chosen so that the three roots in Eq. (56) coincide. From Eq. (54), one sees that if the three roots are far separated, the behavior of $`C_L(k)`$ around $`k_c`$ is linear: $`C_L(k)O(\mathrm{\Delta }k)`$. However, when the three roots coincide, the behavior becomes cubic: $`C_L(k)O(\mathrm{\Delta }k)^3`$. As the requirement of energy conservation leads directly to $`|C_L(k)|^2+|C_R(k)|^2=1`$, this means $`|C_R(k)|`$ is close to one for a wide range of frequencies near $`\mathrm{\Delta }k=0`$. For the specific form of the injected photon we assumed, which peaks at the resonance frequency, this means even a larger spectral width is allowed to yield a satisfactory efficiency.

The significance of the spectral shape of the injected photon becomes more apparent for a Gaussian packet. Consider

$$f(k^{})=\underset{\tau \mathrm{}}{lim}\frac{\sqrt{2}}{\pi ^{1/4}\sqrt{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{2(k^{}k_c)^2}{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}^2}+ik^{}\tau \right],$$
(62)
which represents a photon packet with peak frequency $`k_c`$ and spectral width $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}`$. Notice that Eq. (35) is satisfied owing to the phase factor $`e^{ik^{}\tau }`$, and under the limit $`\tau \mathrm{}`$. Hence the probability of obtaining the entangled state is again given by Eq. (60).

Figure 5 shows the dependence of $`P_R`$ on the width of the injected photon with the same set of parameters as in the study of Lorentzian spectral function. One can conclude that in general the efficiency is improved using a packet with a Gaussian spectral function. This can be understood because for the same spectral width, a Gaussian spectral function is more concentrated around the peak frequency than that of a Lorentzian. Remarkably, notice that in the case $`\lambda _L/\kappa =0.25`$, $`P_R1`$ even for relatively large spectral widths. In fact, we can have $`P_R>0.999`$ for $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}0.3\kappa `$ in a single operation, which can essentially be considered deterministic.

Finally, we would like to address the effects of spontaneous decay. The coupling of the atoms to non-cavity modes broadens the excited-levels. This effect can be readily included by introducing an imaginary part to the energy of the atomic excited states. In other words, we only have to replace $`\omega _e`$ by $`\omega _ei\gamma /2`$, and all the equations remain valid. For cesium systems such as that in Ref. Lange and Kimble (2000), we found that the presence of a non-zero $`\gamma `$ only causes a minute decrease of the probability. For example, by employing the hyperfine levels $`|L=|6S_{1/2},F=4,m_F=4`$, $`|R=|6S_{1/2},F=4,m_F=2`$, and $`|e=|6P_{1/2},F=4,m_F=3`$, we have $`\lambda _R/\lambda _L=\sqrt{7/4}`$. With $`\gamma =0.033\kappa `$ and $`\lambda _L=0.25\kappa `$, one can still obtain a value of $`P_R`$ near $`93\%`$ using an injected Gaussian photon packet with $`\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}0.3\kappa `$. Therefore, the current scheme is quite robust against spontaneous atomic decay.

## VI Conclusion

In conclusion, we study in detail a scheme proposed recently to generate entangled states of two identical $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type three-level atoms inside a leaky cavity. The atoms are initially prepared in the ground states on the same side of the $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$ systems, with the presence of a single photon, which is either in a cavity mode or injected from the exterior of the cavity. First, for a cavity photon, we show analytically that an entangled state can be generated in a single trial with a certain probability always less than $`50\%`$, corroborating the numerical result obtained in Ref. Hong and Lee (2002). However, their scheme is plausible only in the strong coupling regime. By drawing an analogy with a “three-level system”, we provide an intuitive understanding of these results. Second, for an injected photon, we show that the probability can be increased by injecting a spectrally narrow photon. In particular, we show that an almost unit probability can be achieved with a Gaussian packet by exploiting the conditions mentioned above.

Compared with the scheme proposed in Ref. Hong and Lee (2002), which remains probabilistic for each single trial, and requires a feedback mechanism to achieve a unit probability, our proposal here can surely increase the success rate in each trial and hence significantly reduces the number of trials required to yield an entangled state. We have therefore presented here a feasible scheme to generate the maximally entangled state of two $`\mathrm{\Lambda }`$-type three-level atoms with a high probability, which can effectively be classified as “deterministic”. This is also in contrast to recent probabilistic schemes, in which intrinsic uncertainties are inherent in quantum measurement processes Sørensen and Mølmer (2003); Duan and Kimble (2003). However, the main challenge of realizing our scheme is the requirement of a single photon source, which is now under active investigations and may become feasible in the near future Brattke et al. (2003).

###### Acknowledgements.

We thank H. T. Fung for discussions. The work described in this paper is partially supported by two grants from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Project Nos. 428200 and 401603) and a direct grant (Project No. 2060150) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

## Appendix A

In our model, we are interested in initial photon states that may or may not be obtained by using Eqs. (36). For example, it can be shown that with a cavity photon defined by Eq. (38), or a Gaussian packet defined by

$$f(k^{})=\frac{\sqrt{2}}{\pi ^{1/4}\sqrt{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}}}\mathrm{exp}\left[\frac{2(k^{}k_c)^2}{\kappa _{\mathrm{in}}^2}\right],$$
(63)
Eqs. (34) and (36) lead to different results. However, by introducing a phase factor in the spectral functions, Eq. (36) becomes valid for a Gaussian packet defined by Eq. (62) or a “displaced” cavity photon in Eq. (59). In addition, for some packets without a phase factor like $`e^{ik^{}\tau }`$, such as a complex Lorentzian defined by Eq. (61), Eq. (36) still yields the correct results. Hence, it is desirable to obtain a necessary and sufficient condition for the applicability of Eq. (36). Here we will prove that Eq. (35) is the condition we are looking for.

For the initial state

$$|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})|\psi _1(k^{}),$$
(64)
Eq. (35) leads to

$$\begin{array}{ccccc}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f(k^{})V(k^{})e^{ik^{}t}𝑑k^{}=0& & & \mathrm{for}& t0.\end{array}$$
(65)
Equation (65) implies

$$_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑t_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})V(k^{})e^{i(zk^{})t}=_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑t_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})V(k^{})e^{i(zk^{})t}.$$
(66)
The proper meaning of the above equation must be defined by certain limiting process. For our problem, we choose to introduce to the real number $`z`$ a small imaginary part, which has the same sign as $`t`$. Hence

$$\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}_0^{\mathrm{}}𝑑t_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})V(k^{})e^{(izik^{}ϵ)t}=\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑t_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑k^{}f(k^{})V(k^{})e^{(izik^{}\mathrm{sgn}(t)ϵ)t}.$$
(67)
Therefore

$$\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f(k^{})V(k^{})\frac{i}{z+iϵk^{}}𝑑k^{}=2\pi _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}f(k^{})V(k^{})\delta (zk^{})𝑑k^{},$$
(68)
or

$$\underset{ϵ0^+}{lim}_{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}\frac{f(k^{})V(k^{})}{z+iϵk^{}}𝑑k^{}=2\pi if(z)V(z).$$
(69)
From Eq. (34), we can conclude that

$`\psi _1(k)|\widehat{G}(\omega )|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}\left\{{\displaystyle \frac{\delta (kk^{})}{\omega k}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V(k^{})V^{}(k)}{(\omega k)(\omega k^{})}}E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E\right\}f(k^{})𝑑k^{}`$ (70)
$`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{f(k)}{\omega k}}+{\displaystyle \frac{V(k)}{\omega k}}E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E{\displaystyle _{\mathrm{}}^{\mathrm{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{f(k^{})V(k^{})}{\omega k^{}}}𝑑k^{}`$ (71)
For $`t0`$, the evolution is governed by the retarded propagator. We can thus let $`\omega `$ approach the real axis from above, and from Eq. (69), we have

$$\psi _1(k)|\widehat{G}(\omega )|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=\frac{f(k)}{\omega k}2\pi i\frac{f(\omega )V(\omega )V(k)E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E}{\omega k}.$$
(72)
Because $`f(k)`$ represents a wave-packet, $`\widehat{V}`$ has finite support in space, and $`E|\widehat{G}(\omega )|E`$ governs the decaying process of the excited state, $`k`$ is the only real pole that one needs to keep in the asymptotic long time limit. Hence by performing the inverse Fourier transform, we have

$$\psi _1(k)|\widehat{U}(t,0)|\mathrm{\Psi }_{\mathrm{in}}=f(k)e^{ikt}\left(12\pi iV(k)^2E|\widehat{G}(k)|E\right),$$
(73)
which is equivalent to defining the $`S`$-matrix as shown in Eq. (36).


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# The Connection Between Radio Quiet AGN and the High/Soft State of X-Ray Binaries

## 1 Introduction

Accreting black holes, whether stellar mass binary systems, or active galactic nuclei, show many similarities. Both emit radiation over many decades in frequency. Many, but not all, sources in each mass range display evidence for disc accretion in the forms of thermal emission and reflection off the thin disc. Many, but not all, sources in each mass range also have relativistic jets, typically seen through radio observations (see Fender 2003 for a review of the radio properties of X-ray binaries and chapter 2 of Krolik 1999 for a brief introduction to the broadband properties of AGN). Quenching of these radio jets - defined to be a rather sudden drop in the radio emission \- has been known about for some time, both in certain classes of AGN (Epstein et al. 1982) and in certain X-ray binaries (Tananbaum et al. 1972; Waltman et al. 1996; Harmon et al. 1997; Fender et al. 1999).

X-ray binaries thought to contain black holes have at least three spectral states. The low/hard state shows X-ray emission well fit by either a power law with an exponential cutoff at about 200 keV or a thermal Comptonisation model with a temperature of about 70 keV, along with a weak or undetected thermal component associated with a geometrically thin accretion disc (Zdziarski 2000 and references within). A so-called “quiescent state” has been suggested to exist in the black hole candidates, but in reality, the X-ray and radio properties of low luminosity black hole candidates form a continuum down to the lowest observable luminosities (Gallo, Fender & Pooley 2003 - GFP03). The spectrum of the high/soft state is dominated by thermal component thought to arise in a geometrically thin, optically thick accretion disc (Shakura & Sunyaev 1973; Novikov & Thorne 1973) and also exhibits a weak power law tail without an observable cutoff (e.g. Gierliński et al. 1999). The very high state displays the same two components, but with the steep power law, rather than the thermal component dominating the total flux (see e.g. Miyamoto et al. 1991). Steady radio emission, which can be proved by brightness temperature arguments to come from a region larger than the binary separation of the system, and hence likely from a jet, has been found in the low/hard state, and strong radio flares have been seen during the very high/flaring state (Fender 2003). Neither strong nor steady radio emission has ever been detected in the high/soft state. For a review of spectral states of X-ray binary black holes, see Nowak (1995) and references within.

Models for the hard non-thermal emission generally invoke Comptonisation in a low optical depth (i.e. $`\tau <`$1 in the low/hard state and $`\tau <`$5 in the very high state) geometrically thick medium (e.g. Thorne & Price 1975; Shapiro, Lightman & Eardley 1976), although it has also been suggested that the low/hard state’s X-ray emission may be optically thin synchrotron emission from a jet (Markoff, Falcke & Fender 2001- MFF01). Nonetheless, there is general agreement that the high/soft state, the one state thought to be geometrically thin is the one state where the radio emission is suppressed substantially. Theoretical studies suggest that jet production should be suppressed in thin discs due to the lack of poloidal magnetic fields (Livio, Ogilvie & Pringle 1999; Khanna 1999; Meier, Koide & Uchida 2001).

Radio emission from active galactic nuclei is also correlated with the X-ray spectral properties of the system, and with the geometry of the inner accretion flow. Radio loud AGN typically have harder X-ray spectra than radio quiet AGN (Elvis et al. 1994; Zdziarski et al. 1995). Double-peaked optical emission lines are more often detected in the radio loud AGN with broad lines than in their radio quiet broad line counterparts (e.g. Eracleous & Halpern 1994); it has been suggested that these lines are reprocessed flux from a large scale height X-ray emitting region (e.g. Chen, Halpern & Fillipenko 1989).

More detailed evidence that AGN may follow the same spectral state behavior as the black hole binaries has been scarcer. Analogies have been drawn (1) between the Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies and the high/soft state (Pounds, Done & Osborne 1995; McHardy et al. 2003), (2) among low luminosity AGN, Fanaroff-Riley (FR) I galaxies (i.e. core dominated radio galaxies - see Fanaroff & Riley 1974) and the low/hard state (Meier 2001; Falcke, Körding & Markoff 2003 - FKM03) and (3) between FR II galaxies (i.e. lobe dominated radio galaxies) and the very high state (Meier 2001). The similarities between the jet ejection events in 3C120 and GRS 1915+105 (Marscher et al. 2002) can be interpreted as evidence for an analogy between the FR II galaxies and the very high state. Finally, GFP03 found that the high luminosity “transient” jets are likely to have higher velocities than the low luminosity “steady” jets. This is a theoretical prediction of at least one model for explaining the FR I/II dichotomy (Meier 1999), and seems to be supported by the fact that FR I jets tend to be double sided, while FR II jets tend to be single sided (e.g. Hardcastle 1995), providing additional evidence in favor of connections between FR I jets and the low/hard state, and between FR II jets and the very high state.

One thing that has not been clear is whether the high/soft state might exist for a broad range of masses of active galactic nuclei. The Narrow Line Seyfert 1 galaxies (NLSy1’s) which represent the most convincing high/soft state analogs have generally been found to contain black holes at the low mass end of the AGN mass spectrum (i.e. typically less than about 3$`\times 10^6M_{}`$) and to be accreting at tens of percent of the Eddington limit. It has been suggested that the radio quiet quasars may be higher mass examples of the high/soft state (Merloni, Heinz & Di Matteo 2003 - MHD03).

If one accepts a few reasonable, albeit unproven, assumptions about the luminosities and mechanisms for state transitions in accreting black hole systems, one can show that a high/soft state might not exist above the mass limits found in the NLSy1’s; Meier (2001) suggests that the state transitions for the low/hard state to the high/soft state are caused by transitions from an advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF - see e.g. Ichimaru 1977; Esin, McClintock & Narayan 1997) to a standard thin disc, while the transitions to the very high state occur when the thin disc becomes radiation pressure dominated. Since the ADAF to thin disc transition should occur at a fraction of the Eddington luminosity independent of mass, while the luminosity in Eddington units where the thin disc becomes radiation pressure dominated goes as $`M^{1/8}`$ (Shakura & Sunyaev 1976), one might expect the thin disc state to disappear when radiation pressure domination sets in below the luminosity for the transition from ADAF to thin disc; a similar, but less detailed argument for the same effect had previously been laid out in Rozanska & Czerny (2000). The soft-to-hard state transitions for black holes in binary systems are generally found to occur at about 2% of the Eddington limit (Maccarone 2003), although the spectral states do show a hysteresis effect (Miyamoto et al. 1995; Smith, Heindl & Swank 2002; Maccarone & Coppi 2003), and the transition from the hard state to the soft state can sometimes occur at luminosities about 4 times as high. The very high state seems to set in at about 20-30% of the Eddington luminosity, and from inspection of the classification table in Miller et al. (2001), one can see that this state can also show hysteresis effects in its transition luminosities and can exist down to about 10% of the Eddington luminosity. Given a factor of five ratio for a 10 $`M_{}`$ black hole between where the very high state evolves into the high/soft state and where the high/soft state evolves into the low/hard state, one might then expect that no high/soft state systems should exist for black holes more massive than about $`4\times 10^6`$ solar masses.

Other models for the state transitions invoking whether the bulk of the power in the accretion flow is dissipated as thermal energy or as magnetic reconnection events can have the same scaling with mass for both the soft/hard and the soft/very high state transitions (Merloni 2003). Searching for the high/soft state analog in higher mass AGN systems is thus a rather critical step in producing a unified understanding of accretion processes in black hole systems. In this Letter, we will show that AGN accreting in the range of 2-10% of the Eddington luminosity show a “quenching” in their radio emission similar to that found in Cygnus X-1 and GX 339-4 in their high/soft states (Tananbaum et al. 1972; Fender et al. 1999; GFP), and that more generally, the presence of a hard X-ray spectral component and radio emission are well correlated (e.g. results from GRS 1915+105 in Harmon et al. 1997; Klein-Wolt et al. 2002). This similarities supports the picture where (1) the high/soft state exists for AGN of a rather wide range of masses and (2) that this high/soft state occurs at the same range of X-ray luminosities as for the Galactic stellar mass black hole candidates.

## 2 Data and analysis

The correlation between radio luminosity and broadband X-ray luminosity found in GFP03 has been generalized for black holes of all masses to be a $`L_RL_XM`$ correlation, through a multi-dimensional analysis by MHD03 and through the application of a theoretically predicted mass correction by FKM03. Considerable (i.e. several orders of magnitude) scatter does remain in the AGN sample when this correlation is applied, and the difference cannot be wholly due to measurement errors - additional parameters such as the black hole spin might have a major effect on the radio luminosity.

The exact relation found by MHD03, which we have re-expressed in Eddington units, is:

$$\mathrm{log}\frac{L_R}{L_{EDD}}=0.60\mathrm{log}\frac{L_X}{L_{EDD}}+0.38\mathrm{log}\frac{M}{M_{}}7.33.$$
(1)
We take the data used here from the compilation of MHD03. The sample includes AGN for which there are good mass, X-ray luminosity, and radio luminosity measurements. We exclude the sources in their sample for which there is an upper limit rather than a measurement of one of the three important quantities. We then correct the radio luminosity for the mass term as in equation (1), and plot the corrected radio luminosity in Eddington units versus the broadband X-ray luminosity in Eddington units in Figure 1 (a figure similar to Figure 7 of MHD03 and Figure 3b of FKM03).

The X-ray luminosities have been multiplied by a factor of 4.8 as an estimated “broadband” correction, assuming a $`\mathrm{\Gamma }=1.8`$ power law spectrum extending from 10 eV to 100 keV, as compared with the 2-10 keV range over which the luminosities have been tabulated. This is not quite a “bolometric” correction - our goal is to make a comparison with the X-ray binaries for which RXTE’s broadband spectroscopy allows us to observe most of the X-ray emission. We thus do not wish to include the contribution from a component at wavelengths longward of the accretion disc’s peak, such as the radio jet or a far infrared bump which may be partly due to AGN induced star formation or slow reprocessing of AGN photons and may reflect the past, rather than the present luminosity. On the other hand, we do wish to correct for the fact that the thin accretion discs of bright AGN emit primarily in the optical and UV bands, and not in the X-rays. From this point on, when we refer to the “broadband luminsity”, we mean the emission from the disc-corona system, as estimated by the 2-10 keV X-ray luminosity with a correction factor.

Low luminosity AGNs (i.e. those below about 1% of the Eddington luminosity) tend not have the “big blue bump” associated with the emission from a thin disc, and this broadband correction factor is well within the range generally accepted (e.g. Ho 1999), although our correction factor is a bit smaller, because we correct only for the high energy part of the spectrum associated with the disc-corona part of the accretion flow. For the brighter AGN, where the disc emission is stronger (in agreement with the analogy to X-ray binaries), this broadband correction may be a bit too low, and instead a broadband correction of a factor of about 15-20 may be more reasonable.

We have also re-binned the available data for the X-ray binaries where simultaneous radio and X-ray points exist and where there are good mass measurements for the systems. The data set is described in GFP03, and references within; we have included data for the following low/hard state sources: GRO J0422+32, XTE J1118+480, 4U 1543-47, XTE J1550-564, Cyg X-1, V404 Cyg & GX 339-4. We have included data from GRS 1915+105 and the transient source sample of Fender & Kuulkers (2001) for the “very high state.” The transient source points are not based on strictly simultaneous data, and hence may have some systematic errors introduced, but ignoring these data points does not change the results substantially, because the points lie very close to the data for GRS 1915+105 and because most of the points in the high luminosity bin come from GRS 1915+105 in any case. As in the AGN case, we have excluded points where the data are upper limits (for fluxes) or lower limits (for masses), and we have applied the mass correction from MHD03 to the data. We have assumed a mass of 6 $`M_{}`$ for GX 339-4, the mass function measured by Hynes et al. (2003) and a distance of 4 kpc (Zdziarski et al. 1998), but we note that this is a lower limit on the mass and not an actual measurement. We must include this source despite its not having an actual mass measurement because it is the only X-ray binary with simultaneous radio and X-ray data at the lowest luminosities. We have also tested the correlation assuming a mass of 9 $`M_{}`$ and have found that the results are not changed substantially.

In Figure 2, we have over-plotted the binned binary data with the data from the AGN. We have used the same binning ranges for the X-ray binary sample as for the AGN sample, but we note that there are no simultaneous radio and X-ray observations of X-ray binaries below about $`10^6L_{EDD}`$ and very few in the range around $`10^3L_{EDD}`$. Also, there are relatively few points in our X-ray binary sample very close to 10% of the Eddington luminosity because the radio data consists primarily of upper limits at this luminosity. We have also re-fit the AGN data without including the two “quenched” bins in the correlation and we find that:

$$\mathrm{log}\frac{L_{R,corr}}{L_{EDD}}=(0.64\pm 0.09)\mathrm{log}\frac{L_X}{L_{EDD}}(8.26\pm 0.40),$$
(2)
values that correspond much more closely with the X-ray binary correlation found in GFP03. We note here that the low luminosity AGN and X-ray binaries show a very similar trend, and that the AGN correlation extends several orders of magnitude lower in luminosity than does the X-ray binary correlation. By analogy, this bolsters arguments that suggest that the quiescent state of X-ray binaries is merely an extension of the low/hard state, and that the jet will begin to dominate the total accretion power at very low luminosities (see e.g. Fender, Gallo & Jonker 2003). We also show in Figure 3 the ratio between the data points and the best fit to the non-quenched data. The AGN points with broadband luminosity at 3% & 10% of the Eddington luminosity are factors of $`5`$ (i.e. 1.7$`\sigma `$ and 3.5$`\sigma `$, respectively) below the correlation. We note that due to the application of a broadband correction factor more appropriate to lower luminosity AGN, the 3% and 10% of Eddington values are likely to be underestimates by a factor of a few, and the points above a few percent of the Eddington limit in the plots should be moved a bit to the right. Sliding the points to the right would push them a bit more below the curve, so the quenching may actually be a bit stronger and more statistically significant the the factor of $`5`$ estimate.

## 3 Discussion

The high/soft state appears to exist in AGN of all masses in the sample which have broadband luminosities of order 5-10% $`L_{EDD}`$. The effect is not sensitive to whether the systems classified as NLSy1’s are included in the sample. The masses of the mean AGN in the bins where the downturn is seen are $`5\times 10^7M_{}`$ and $`6\times 10^7M_{}`$, clearly above the typical masses for the NLSy1’s.

The observed correlations also help to underscore the importance of considering the radio-to-X-ray luminosity ratio as a measure of the radio loudness in addition to the more traditional radio-to-optical luminosity ratio. Such an approach does complicate comparisons with some of the historical literature on AGN and optical surveys of AGN tend do to be wider and deeper than those in the X-rays. Still the optical emission in AGN sometimes is thermal emission from the accretion disc and sometimes is non-thermal emission from a jet; the relative contributions have dependences on black hole mass, redshift, viewing angle and Eddington fraction. The hard X-rays should always be dominated by emission from the Compton corona (unless one adopts an emission model such as that of MFF01 or Harris & Krawczynski 2002, in which case the hard X-ray emission should often be dominated by the jet). The greater homogeneity of emission mechanisms in the X-rays contrasted with the optical makes correlations discovered in the X-rays easier to interpret. Furthermore, correlations made in the X-ray will be easier to compare with correlations found in the stellar mass black hole candidates.

In hindsight, it is not surprising that the high/soft state exists at roughly the same luminosity for AGN as it does for X-ray binaries. The well-known work of Ledlow & Owen (1996) showed that the FR I radio galaxies lie systematically below the FR II radio galaxies in a plot of radio power versus $`R`$ magnitude. Using empirical scaling relations between the radio power and bolometric luminosity, and between the $`R`$ magnitudes and black hole masses, Ghisellini & Celotti (2001) found that the dividing line corresponds to about 2% of the Eddington luminosity. That the scaling relations used by Ghisellini & Celotti (2001) have considerable scatter, while there are very few sources on the “wrong” side of the dividing line between FR I and II galaxies seems may be taken as evidence that there is intrinsically a gap where there are no strong radio galaxies that would have been included in the 3C sample used in the Ledlow & Owen (1996) diagram. The gap, where the high/soft state AGN exist in reality, is then filled in by the low/hard state/FR I systems scattered upwards and very high state/FR II systems scattered downwards. Understanding where is the error in the theoretical predictions (Rozanska & Czerny 2000;Meier 2001) that soft states would not exist for such mass mass black holes remains an open question; indeed many other mechanisms for producing state transitions apart from those discussed above also predict a roughly $`M^{1/8}`$ dependence of the state transition luminosities (e.g. Merloni 2003).

The quenching of the radio jets in the high/soft state range of luminosities seems not to be as extreme for the AGN as it is in the stellar mass systems; the AGN show a drop of a factor of only about 10 in the high/soft state. In the stellar mass black holes, the radio luminosity drops by a factor of at least 30-50 from the low/hard state correlation’s extrapolation (Fender et al. 1999; Corbel et al. 2001). Probably this is partly from contamination of the high/soft state AGN luminosity range due to measurement errors on the masses of the black holes in the AGN and possibly also the hysteresis effects seen in the binary systems. Also, our initial broadband correction underestimates the real spectral correction factors for sources in this range, leading to an additional underestimate of the quenching effect.

The $`L_XL_R`$ correlation in MHD03 exhibits about 3 orders of magnitude of scatter. At least one order of magnitude is likely to come from the use of the velocity dispersion-black hole mass technique to measure most of the masses (e.g. Merritt & Ferrarese 2001), but this is unlikely to explain everything. An excellent candidate for the additional scatter would be black hole spin effects, since the black hole spin may affect jet power either directly, if the jet is the result of the extraction of black hole rotational energy (Blandford & Znajek 1977) or indirectly, if the jet is powered by the rotational energy of the inner disc, which should be larger for a rotating black hole (Blandford & Payne 1982). Given that the high mass stars which are the progenitors of stellar mass black holes have angular momenta much larger than the maximum angular momenta for black holes of the same mass, it would not seem too unreasonable for all stellar mass black holes to be rapidly rotating, as is suggested by some models for the high frequency quasi-periodic oscillations in the black hole binaries (Rezzolla et al. 2003). On the other hand, black hole-black hole mergers may contribute substantially to the spin evolution of the black holes in AGN and would tend to reduce the spins of most of the black holes produced in the mergers (Merritt 2002; Hughes & Blandford 2003). It would hence not be too surprising if the black holes in AGN show a much larger range of spins and of jet power at a given mass and luminosity. Testing this hypothesis may be possible through iron line spectroscopy with the planned Constellation-X mission, as iron lines have proved to be a powerful diagnostic of spin in AGN (see e.g. Wilms et al. 2001). It was found in MHD03 that the scatter in the correlation is reduced by eliminating sources in this range; we also find that the eliminating them makes slope of the correlation in the AGN closer to that found in the X-ray binaries.

More broadband spectroscopy should be undertaken on the putative high/soft state AGN to determine if the systems are truly identical to their lower mass counterparts; the work on NGC 4051 (McHardy et al. 2003) shows that there may be systematic spectral differences between the otherwise rather similar systems, as this system shows similar variability characteristics to the high/soft state of X-ray binaries, and a strong soft quasi-thermal component, but shows a substantially harder power law tail. This should be possible for the brightest sources with a combination of observations from INTEGRAL and from ground based optical telescopes.

A start on this investigation can be made with the existing data. Numerous studies of large samples of AGN suggest that the typical spectral index $`\alpha `$-0.75, where $`\alpha `$ is defined by $`F(\nu )`$$`\nu ^\alpha `$ (e.g. Wilkes & Elvis 1987; Nandra & Pounds 1994; Lawson & Turner 1997 - LT). From examining the individual spectra of the sources in the 2-10% of $`L_{EDD}`$ range, we find that there are 15 sources, 3 of which are NLSy1’s and hence are known to have strong soft X-ray excesses. Of the 12 non-NLSy1’s, one is a Seyfert 2 galaxy in which the hypothesis of a strong soft X-ray excess is very difficult to test because of absorption, and one of the quasars, PG 0844+349 also shows evidence of rather strong absorption. One system (PG 1229+204) was rather faint and no spectral fit is available in the literature (see the discussion in LT). Of the 9 remaining systems, 5 clearly show soft excesses (Mkn 279 - see e.g. Weaver, Gelbord & Yaqoob 2001; NGC 7469 - see e.g. DeRosa, Fabian & Piro 2002; PG 0804+761 & PG 1211+143 - see e.g. George et al. 2000; Mkn 335 - see e.g. Turner & Pounds 1988), two show spectra softer than $`\alpha =0.95`$ (PG 0052+251 - LT & PG 0953+415 - George et al. 2000), one shows a fairly typical X-ray spectrum (PG 1307+085 - LT), and only one shows a spectrum harder than the typical quasar spectrum (PG 1613+658 - LT).

The sources with relatively soft spectra, but no clear soft excess have higher black hole masses than the sources with clear soft excesses (pushing their disc component’s peak to lower energies since $`T_{disc}`$$`M_{BH}^{1/4}`$), and are at higher redshifts, so the observed soft X-rays probe a slightly higher energy in the rest frame. One thus might expect to need to use the EUV to find their “soft X-ray excesses.” It is worth noting that the single truly hard X-ray spectrum belongs to a source which also shows the only flat radio spectrum among the sources (Falcke, Malkan & Biermann 1995; Ho 2002) and has an inferred luminosity just barely higher than 2% of $`L_{EDD}`$; it may represent a source placed into the wrong bin in the correlation due to measurement errors or hysteresis. Thus while we have applied “mix-and-match” criteria to discussion the spectra, there seems to be fairly suggestive anecdotal evidence that the spectra of the systems which are well below the GFP03, MHD03 & FKM03 correlation curves and which lie in the 2-10% of $`L_{EDD}`$ range have systematically softer X-ray spectra than the sources; the correlations between X-ray hardness and radio loudness found by Elvis et al. (1994) and by Zdziarski et al. (1995) using the classical definition of radio loudness (i.e. the radio to optical flux ratio) rather than the radio-to-bolometric luminosity ratio hold up.

## 4 Acknowledgments

TM thanks Mike Eracleous for useful discussions which helped to stimulate this work. We thank the referee, Andrea Merloni, for useful suggestions which improved this work.


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# The U(5)–O(6) transition in the Interacting Boson Model and the E(5) critical point symmetry

## Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by the Spanish DGICYT under project number BFM2002-03315, by CONACyT (México) and by an INFN-DGICYT agreement.


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# Optical-fiber based measurement of an ultra-small volume high-𝑄 photonic crystal microcavity

## Abstract

A two-dimensional photonic crystal semiconductor microcavity with a quality factor $`Q40,000`$ and a modal volume $`V_{\text{eff}}0.9`$ cubic wavelengths is demonstrated. A micron-scale optical fiber taper is used as a means to probe both the spectral and spatial properties of the cavity modes, allowing not only measurement of modal loss, but also the ability to ascertain the in-plane localization of the cavity modes. This simultaneous demonstration of high-$`Q`$ and ultra-small $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ in an optical microcavity is of potential interest in quantum optics, nonlinear optics, and optoelectronics. In particular, the measured $`Q`$ and $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ values could enable strong coupling to both atomic and quantum dot systems in cavity quantum electrodynamics.

The use of an optical microcavity to alter the interaction of light with matter has been instrumental within a wide range of fields, including cavity quantum electrodynamics (cQED) Kimble (1998), nonlinear optics Chang and Campillo (1996), and molecular sensing Norris et al. (1997). This interaction depends strongly upon the cavity photon lifetime, measured by the quality factor $`Q`$, and the electromagnetic energy density within the cavity, quantified by the effective modal volume $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ 111$`V_{\text{eff}}`$ is defined as the electric field energy within the cavity normalized to the peak electric field energy density Foresi et al. (1997). Planar photonic crystal (PC) microcavities have attracted significant attention Painter et al. (1999); Foresi et al. (1997); Ryu et al. (2002); Srinivasan and Painter (2002) in this regard due to their ability to trap light within volumes approaching the theoretical limit Painter et al. (1999), the potential for on-chip integration with waveguides Noda et al. (2000); Smith et al. (2001); Barclay et al. (2003), and lithographic control of many salient properties of the cavity modes Painter et al. (2001). A major limitation, however, has been the relatively low experimentally-realized $`Q`$ values, limited to $`<3,000`$ Yoshie et al. (2001) until recent demonstrations of $`Q6,400`$ in an add-drop filter Akahane et al. (2003) and $`Q13,000`$ Srinivasan et al. (2003) in a sub-threshold laser cavity. In this Letter, we present optical fiber taper measurements of a PC microcavity supporting a mode with $`Q40,000`$ and in-plane localization consistent with $`V_{\text{eff}}0.9`$ cubic wavelengths ($`(\lambda /n)^3`$). This simultaneous realization of a high-$`Q`$ *and* ultra-small-$`V_{\text{eff}}`$ PC microcavity is of importance to a number of applications in the aforementioned disciplines, while the fiber taper probe is of potential value to future studies of wavelength-scale resonators.

The PC cavity geometry employed is shown in Figure 1a,b, and was designed using group theoretical, Fourier space, and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) analyses as described in detail elsewhere Srinivasan and Painter (2002). The cavity consists of a localized defect in a square lattice of air holes that are etched into an optically thin membrane of refractive index $`n\text{=}3.4`$. This geometry provides in-plane modal localization via distributed Bragg reflection due to the lattice and vertical confinement by total internal reflection at the membrane-air interface. The resulting TE-like (electric field in the plane of the slab) $`A_2^0`$ defect mode (so labelled due to its symmetry and ground-state frequency in the cavity) shown in Fig. 1b is predicted to have $`Q10^5`$ and $`V_{\text{eff}}1.23`$ $`(\lambda _c/n)^3`$, where $`\lambda _c`$ is the wavelength of the resonant cavity mode. The important aspects of the cavity design are: (1) the dominant electric field component, $`E_x`$, is odd about the $`\widehat{x}`$-axis, thereby reducing vertical radiation loss from the patterned slab, (2) a grade in the hole radius is used to both further confine the mode in-plane and reduce in-plane radiative losses, and (3) the design is relatively insensitive to perturbations to the cavity, as verified through simulations where the steepness of the grade and the average hole radius ($`\overline{r}`$) have been varied significantly without degrading the $`Q`$ below $`20,000`$.

In this work, PC membrane microcavities are formed from a silicon-on-insulator wafer consisting of a $`340`$ nm thick silicon (Si) layer on top of a 2 $`\mu `$m silicon dioxide layer (although Si was chosen here, similar high refractive index PC microcavities have been fabricated in a wide range of semiconductors, including AlGaAs-based Yoshie et al. (2001) and InP-based Srinivasan et al. (2003) systems). Cavities are fabricated using electron beam lithography, a plasma etch through the Si layer, and a hydrofluoric acid wet etch to remove the underlying oxide layer. Fully processed chips consist of a linear array of cavities, with lattice constant ($`a`$) varying between $`380`$-$`430`$ nm and with $`5`$-$`10`$ different lattice filling fractions (or equivalently, $`\overline{r}`$) for a given $`a`$. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images of a fabricated device are shown in Fig. 2.

To study the resonant modes of the PC microcavities an optical fiber-based probe is used. Optical fiber tapers Knight et al. (1997); Birks and Li (1992) are fabricated by heating and stretching a standard single mode fiber to a diameter of $`1`$-$`2`$ $`\mu `$m, providing an air-guided fundamental mode with an evanescent tail extending into the surrounding air. The taper is mounted so that it can be laterally and vertically positioned over the cavities (Fig. 1c), and is connected to a scanning tunable laser with 1 pm resolution and a $`\lambda =1565`$-$`1625`$ nm wavelength scan range. When the taper is brought close ($`500`$ nm) to the surface of a given cavity, a number of resonance features in the taper transmission appear (Fig. 3a). These features disappear if the taper is positioned to the side of the cavity or if the polarization of the input light is adjusted to be TM-polarized relative to the PC slab. The resonance positions shift as a function of $`a`$ and $`\overline{r}`$ in a manner consistent with that expected for modes supported by the photonic lattice Joannopoulos et al. (1995). Noting that the defect mode of Fig. 1 is the lowest frequency mode lying within the (partial) photonic band-gap of the lattice, an experimental spectral identification of this mode is made for fixed $`a`$ as follows. Devices are tested as a function of decreasing $`\overline{r}`$, so that initially, when the devices have large-sized holes, all of the resonant modes formed from the appropriate photonic band-edge lie above the frequency scan range of the input laser. We then test in succession cavities with decreasing $`\overline{r}`$ until a resonance is observed. This resonance is the lowest frequency mode lying within the in-plane (partial) bandgap of the photonic crystal, and thus corresponds to the cavity mode of interest, the *fundamental* $`A_2^0`$ mode.

A wavelength scan of the taper transmission showing the resonance of the $`A_2^0`$ mode for a device with $`a`$=425 nm is given in the inset of Fig. 3b. In this measurement the taper is positioned parallel to the $`\widehat{y}`$-axis at a height of $`\mathrm{\Delta }z=650`$ nm above the center of the PC microcavity. Fitting this transmission data to a Lorentzian, a linewidth $`\gamma 0.047`$ nm is measured for the cavity resonance. This linewidth is a *maximum* estimate for the cold-cavity linewidth $`\gamma _0`$ due to cavity loading effects of the taper. Loading by the taper results in out-coupling to the *forward* propagating fundamental taper mode which, upon interference with the power directly transmitted past the cavity, results in the observed resonant feature in the taper transmission. Other parasitic taper loading effects include coupling to radiation modes, higher-order taper modes, and the *backward* propagating fundamental taper mode. To estimate the taper loading effects on the $`A_2^0`$ cavity mode, we examine $`\gamma `$ as a function of $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$. The resulting data (Fig. 3b) shows that as $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$ increases, the loading effects are reduced, until a regime is reached where the taper does not significantly effect the cavity mode and the measured linewidth asymptotically approaches the cold-cavity linewidth. Assuming that the loading is monoexponentially related to $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$, we fit the measured linewidth to the function $`\gamma =\gamma _0+\beta e^{\alpha \mathrm{\Delta }z}`$, where $`\gamma _0`$, $`\beta `$, and $`\alpha `$ are all fitting parameters. The resulting fit value of $`\gamma _0`$ is $`0.041`$ nm, essentially identical to the directly measured linewidth when $`\mathrm{\Delta }z800`$ nm, and corresponds to a cold-cavity $`Q39,500`$. To compare this result directly with numerical calculations, we repeat our previous FDTD calculations Srinivasan and Painter (2002) but include an offset in $`\overline{r}`$ of $`r/a=0.05`$ to account for the increased size of the fabricated holes (as measured by SEM) relative to the design of Fig. 1. Doing so yields a predicted $`Q56,000`$ and $`a/\lambda _c0.266`$, fairly close to the measured values, and a $`V_{\text{eff}}=0.88(\lambda _c/n)^3`$, smaller than the original design due to the better in-plane confinement provided by the larger hole radii. As a final comment on $`Q`$, we note that a number of devices encompassing a range of values for $`\overline{r}`$ and the grade in $`r/a`$ have been tested, and $`Q`$ values $`15,000`$ have been consistently measured, in accordance with simulation results. As described earlier, this robustness to deviations from the ideal structure is perhaps the most important aspect of the cavity design.

By measuring (for fixed $`\mathrm{\Delta }z`$) the strength of the coupling to the PC cavity modes as a function of lateral taper displacement, the in-plane localization of the cavity modes can be ascertained Knight et al. (1995), 222Here the same optical fiber taper near-field probe is used to both excite the PCWG modes and to map their spatial profile. Other works employing evanescent coupling from eroded monomode fibers to excite silica microsphere whispering-gallery modes have used a secondary fiber tip to collect and map the mode profiles Knight et al. (1995).. The strength of coupling is reflected in the *depth* of the resonant dip in the taper transmission 333The maximum transmission depth achieved for the mode of interest was $`10\%`$, though coupling to other modes reached depths as large as $`30\%`$. Coupling in all cases was limited to the *under-coupled* regime Cai et al. (2000).. For the taper aligned along the long ($`\widehat{y}`$) and short ($`\widehat{x}`$) axes of the cavity the depth of the resonant transmission dip for the $`A_2^0`$ cavity mode versus taper misalignment is shown in Figs. 4a and 4b, respectively. These measurements show the mode to be well-localized to a micron-scale central region of the cavity, and confirm that the $`A_2^0`$ mode is both high-$`Q`$ and small $`V_{\text{eff}}`$. They do not, however, reveal the highly oscillatory cavity near-field, but rather an envelope of the field, due to the relatively broad taper field profile. To better understand the results of Fig. 4, we consider a simple picture of the taper-PC cavity coupling Haus (1984), where the coupling coefficient is calculated from the analytically-determined taper field and the phase-matched Fourier components of the FDTD-generated cavity field. The calculated resonant transmission depth as a function of taper displacement is shown in Figs. 4a,b as solid lines and agrees closely with the measured data. Assuming that the cavity mode is localized to the slab in the $`\widehat{z}`$-direction, the close correspondence between the measured and calculated in-plane localization indicates that $`V_{\text{eff}}0.9(\lambda _c/n)^3`$ for this high-$`Q`$ mode. Similar measurements of the higher-frequency resonant modes of the PC microcavity (such as those in Fig. 3a) indicate that they are significantly more delocalized in-plane in comparison to the $`A_2^0`$ mode, as one might expect for higher-order modes of the cavity.

To illustrate the potential applications of such a small $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ and high-$`Q`$ microcavity, we consider two examples from quantum optics. The Purcell factor ($`F_P`$), a measure of the microcavity-enhanced spontaneous emission rate of an embedded active material, is given under suitable (maximal) conditions as Gayral et al. (1999):

$$F_P=\frac{3}{4\pi ^2}\left(\frac{\lambda _c}{n}\right)^3\left(\frac{Q}{V_{\text{eff}}}\right).$$
(1)
For the PC microcavity studied here ($`Q40,000`$, $`V_{\text{eff}}0.9(\lambda _c/n)^3`$), the predicted $`F_P`$ is $`3,500`$, an extremely large value for a semiconductor-based microcavity (previous work on semiconductor microdisks Gayral et al. (1999) have predicted $`F_P190`$). Another application is in cQED, where strongly coupled atom-photon systems have been proposed as candidates to produce the quantum states required for quantum computing applications Mabuchi and Doherty (2002). For such applications, the regime of strong coupling Kimble (1998), where the atom-photon coupling coefficient ($`g`$) exceeds the cavity and atomic decay rates ($`\kappa `$ and $`\gamma _{}`$, respectively), must be reached. Although strong coupling has been achieved in systems consisting of an alkali atom and an actively-stabilized Fabry-Perot cavity Kimble (1998), in future applications, where higher levels of integration are sought, chip-based cavities are of interest Mabuchi and Doherty (2002). Using the measured $`Q`$ and estimated $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ for the $`A_2^0`$ mode studied here, the relevant parameters for a commonly-used Cesium (Cs) atomic transition ($`\lambda _0=852`$ nm, $`\gamma _{}=2.6`$ MHz) Kimble (1998), and the formulas $`g=\eta (\gamma _{}(c\lambda _0^2/8\pi \gamma _{}V_{\text{eff}})^{1/2})`$ and $`\kappa =\omega /4\pi Q`$, we calculate $`g17`$ GHz 444As $`V_{\text{eff}}`$ is defined relative to peak electric field energy density, rather than electric field strength, a factor $`\eta `$ must be included for dielectric cavities where the two values are not equal. $`\eta 0.42`$ for our cavity. and $`\kappa 4.4`$ GHz, indicating that the coupled Cs-PC cavity system could achieve strong coupling. In addition, the calculated critical atom number ($`N_0=2\kappa \gamma _{}/g^2`$) and saturation photon number ($`m_0=\gamma _{}^2/2g^2`$) are $`N_08.4\text{x}10^5`$ and $`m_01.2\text{x}10^8`$, a regime where a single atom would have a profound effect on the cavity field, and vice versa. A similar calculation for an InAs semiconductor quantum dot Becher et al. (2001) indicates that the current PC microcavity would also be capable of reaching strong coupling in such a solid-state system.

In conclusion, while silica fiber tapers have been successfully used to probe *larger* ($`V_{\text{eff}}500(\lambda _c/n)^3`$) *silica-based* resonators, such as microspheres Knight et al. (1997); Cai et al. (2000) and microtoroids Armani et al. (2003), the current work illustrates the use of tapers as a probe for *ultra-small mode volume, high refractive index* ($`n3.4`$) cavities, where the micron-scale dimension of the taper is utilized to both source and out-couple light from the cavity. This technique allows for rapid characterization of relevant cavity mode parameters ($`\lambda _c`$, $`Q`$, and $`V_{\text{eff}}`$), and although it does not necessarily provide efficient coupling to the cavity , as a suitably designed waveguide may Barclay et al. (2003), the use of an external fiber-based probe provides a greater level of versatility than other methods, such as embedding of active material within the cavity Yoshie et al. (2001); Srinivasan et al. (2003) or microfabrication of input-output waveguides to couple to the cavity Noda et al. (2000); Lin et al. (2001). In particular, resonant cavity elements in both passive and active devices can be tested, making it a valuable tool for future studies of wavelength-scale resonators. Here, we have used this technique to demonstrate a PC microcavity mode with $`Q40,000`$ and in-plane localization consistent with $`V_{\text{eff}}0.9`$ $`(\lambda _c/n)^3`$.

The authors thank B. Lev and H. Mabuchi for useful discussions pertaining to cQED. K.S. thanks the Hertz Foundation and M.B. thanks the Moore Foundation, NPSC, and HRL Laboratories for their graduate fellowship support.


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# Quark Loop Effects in Semileptonic Form Factors for Heavy-Light Mesons

## 1 INTRODUCTION

Recent improvements in lattice determinations of $`f_K`$ and $`f_\pi `$  encourage us to hope that lattice values for semileptonic form factors for heavy-light decays will achieve an accuracy of a few percent in the near future. Previous form factor calculations have been done in the quenched approximation (except for a preliminary study ), using light quarks with masses of the order of the strange quark . Here we report a preliminary investigation of quenching effects by comparing results from matched quenched and dynamical quark-loop gauge ensembles . The 409 $`20^3\times 64`$ quenched lattices were generated with a one-loop Symanzik-improved gauge action, and the 489 $`20^3\times 64`$ dynamical lattices were generated with 2+1 flavors of Asqtad staggered quarks with bare quark masses $`am_{u,d}=0.02`$ and $`am_s=0.05`$, the latter, approximately 1.2 times the physical strange quark mass. The lattice scale $`a`$ was based on the $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ 1S-1P mass splitting , giving $`a=0.125`$ fm for the quenched lattices and $`a=0.122`$ fm for the dynamical lattices.

Form factors were measured using clover-improved, propagating Wilson light and heavy quarks. Three light and five heavy quark masses were used for each ensemble. The mass of the lightest quark was approximately equal to the strange quark mass, thus avoiding problems with exceptional configurations. Quark masses were tuned only approximately between the two ensembles, so a comparison of results requires some interpolation. We included three heavy-light “$`B`$” meson three-momenta and 21 three-momentum transfers to the recoiling light-light “$`\pi `$” meson.

## 2 METHOD

We measure the three point function in the usual way with a light-light (or heavy-light) “$`\pi `$” interpolating operator $`𝒪_{\pi ,G}`$ at $`t=0`$, a heavy-light “$`B`$” interpolating operator $`𝒪_{B,G}`$ at $`t_f=16`$ and a weak vector current operator acting over the range $`t[0,16]`$:

$$F_\mu (\mathrm{𝐤𝐪𝐩},t)=0|O_{\pi ,G}(𝐤,0)V_\mu (𝐪,t)O_{B,E}^{}(𝐩,t_f)|0$$

The quark-antiquark wavefunction $`G`$ for the $`\pi `$ meson was a product of two independent Gaussians of width $`1.4a`$ centered at the origin. The quark-antiquark wavefunction $`E`$ for the $`B`$ meson was a plane wave of c.m. momentum $`𝐩`$ and a decaying exponential in the relative coordinate. The current vertex was projected onto three-momentum $`𝐪`$, thus selecting a recoil three-momentum $`𝐤=𝐩𝐪`$. Heavy-light and light-light two-point functions were also measured over the same range of three-momenta $`𝐤`$ and with source/sink combinations $`G`$ and $`E`$:

$`C_{X,GG}(𝐤,t)`$ $`=`$ $`0|O_{X,G}(𝐤,0)O_{X,G}^{}(𝐤,t)|0`$
$``$ $`Z_{X,G}(𝐤)Z_{X,G}(𝐤)e^{E_\pi (𝐤)t}`$
$`C_{B,GE}(𝐩,t)`$ $`=`$ $`0|O_{B,G}(𝐩,0)O_{B,E}^{}(𝐩,t)|0`$
$``$ $`Z_{B,G}(𝐩)Z_{B,E}(𝐩)e^{E_B(𝐩)t}`$
for $`X=\pi ,B`$. The form factor was extracted using the conventional ratio method

$$R_\mu (t)=\frac{F_\mu (𝐤,𝐪,𝐩,t)}{C_{\pi ,GG}(𝐤,t)C_{B,GE}(𝐩,t_ft)}$$

$$\pi (𝐤)|V_\mu (𝐪)|B(𝐩)=NZ_{\pi ,G}(𝐤)Z_{B,G}(𝐩)R_\mu ,$$

where $`Z_{\pi ,G}(𝐤)`$ and $`Z_{B,G}(𝐩)`$ are hadron overlap coefficients, $`R_\mu `$ is the plateau value of $`R_\mu (t)`$ and

$$N=N_{u,d}N_b=\sqrt{1\frac{3\kappa _{u,d}}{4\kappa _{\mathrm{cr}}}}\sqrt{1\frac{3\kappa _b}{4\kappa _{\mathrm{cr}}}}$$

is the Fermilab normalization . Additional vertex operators were measured to implement the tadpole improved rotation for the quark wave functions in the vector current:

$$q_I(x)=N_q\left[1+ad\stackrel{}{\gamma }\stackrel{}{D}\right]q(x).$$

For each quark mass combination the two-point functions were fit simultaneously for all momenta to a ground plus first excited state expression parameterized by a smooth function of momentum. The resulting ground state energies were then fixed when fitting the three-point functions, and the resulting hadronic overlap coefficients were used to complete the three-point function.

The Lorentz invariant form factors $`f^+(q^2)`$ and $`f^{}(q^2)`$ were extracted using kinematic factors based on physical hadron masses determined from the two-point dispersion relations. To compare quenched and dynamical results, we required an interpolation in only the heavy quark mass, since a light quark mass in each ensemble was already matched to the strange quark mass, as determined from the unmixed $`s\overline{s}`$ pseudoscalar meson. To this end the form factors were fit to a parameterization of Bećirević and Kaidalov (BK) :

$`f^+`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_H(1\alpha _H)}{(1\stackrel{~}{q}^2)(1\alpha _H\stackrel{~}{q}^2)}}`$
$`f^0`$ $`=`$ $`{\displaystyle \frac{c_H(1\alpha _H)}{(1\stackrel{~}{q}^2/\beta _H)}}`$
($`\stackrel{~}{q}^2=q^2/m_B^{}^2`$), which incorporates constraints from heavy quark scaling, the $`B^{}`$ meson pole, and QCD sum rules. The resulting BK coefficients were then interpolated to the various dynamical-ensemble physical heavy-light meson masses through a fit to scaling forms as a function of the heavy-light meson mass, as shown in Fig. 1.

A sample result is shown in Fig. 2.

The quenched prediction is about 10% low. At this heavy-light mass the effect is greater than $`2\sigma `$. We find a similar underestimate for the entire range of heavy-light meson masses in this study, from approximately $`m_{D_s}`$ to $`m_{B_s}`$ with light spectator and recoil quarks at the strange quark mass.

## 3 CONCLUSION

We have measured the semileptonic form factor for decays of a heavy-light pseudoscalar meson to a light-light pseudoscalar meson using improved Wilson valence quarks. We chose carefully matched quenched and Asqtad $`2+1`$ flavor staggered fermion ensembles to look for the effects of virtual quarks. Fixing all light quarks at the strange quark mass, we required only a single heavy-quark interpolation to make the comparison. For heavy-light masses of the order of the $`B_s`$ mass, we found that virtual quark loops tend to increase the form factors by approximately 10%, a $`>2\sigma `$ effect. Note however that our preliminary analysis neglects lattice/continuum matching (lattice renormalization) of the heavy-light current. Since the coupling constant is larger on the dynamical lattices, including the renormalization may compensate for at least some of the difference found between quenched and dynamical simulations.

This work is supported by the US NSF and DOE. Computations were done with NPACI resources at SDSC and TACC and at PSC. Gauge configurations were generated at SDSC, ORNL, PSC, NCSA.