Dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity with an $N$-level detector or $N\ensuremath{-}1$ two-level atoms

Dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity with an $N$ -level detector or $N - 1$ two-level atoms

A. V. Dodonov and V. V. Dodonov

Phys. Rev. A 86, 015801 – Published 5 July 2012

Abstract

We study the photon generation from vacuum via the dynamical Casimir effect in a cavity containing a $N$ -level detector in equally spaced, resonant ladder configuration or $N - 1$ identical resonant two-level atoms. If the modulation frequency equals exactly twice the unperturbed cavity frequency, the photon growth goes on steadily for odd $N$ , while for even $N$ at most $N - 2$ photons can be generated. This finding is corroborated by numerical calculations. In the limit $N \to \infty$ we obtain the harmonic oscillator model of the detector, which admits analytical results.