Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 2: QED
Q 2.3: Talk
Monday, March 11, 2024, 11:30–11:45, HS 1015
Quantum radiation in a dielectric with time-dependent dissipation — •Sascha Lang1,2,3, Stefan Yoshi Buhmann1, Ralf Schützhold2,4,3, and William G. Unruh5 — 1University of Kassel, Germany — 2Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Germany — 3Universität Duisburg-Essen, Germany — 4Technische Universität Dresden, Germany — 5University of British Columbia, Canada
Rapidly changing system parameters in tuneable dielectrics can trigger the spontaneous conversion of quantum vacuum fluctuations into real photons [1]. A famous example is the production of photon pairs in the presence of strongly non-adiabatic refractive index modulations n(t). Unlike in relativistic quantum field theory, the evolution of quantum vacuum fluctuations in dielectrics is affected by dispersion and dissipation. A consistent description of the quantum dynamics in explicitly time dependent environments requires a microscopic model that can be quantised canonically.
We present an approach which models the medium via a continuous set of harmonic oscillators [2] and accounts for dissipation by coupling those medium oscillators to a scalar environment field [3]. As an example of quantum radiation, we consider particle pair creation in a medium with a non-adiabatically varying dissipation strength.
[1] F. Belgiorno, S. L. Cacciatori & F. Dalla Piazza: Eur. Phys. J. D 68, 134 (2014)
[2] Hopfield, Phys. Rev. 112, 1555 (1958)
[3] Lang, Schützhold & Unruh: Phys. Rev. D 102, 125020 (2020)
Keywords: dielectrics; quantum radiation; pair creation; microscopic model; quantum electrodynamics