We consider a movable mirror coupled to a one-dimensional massless scalar field in a cavity. Both the field and the mirror’s mechanical degrees of freedom are described quantum mechanically, and they can interact with each other via the radiation pressure operator. We investigate the dynamical evolution of mirror and field starting from a nonequilibrium initial state, and their local interaction which brings the system to a stationary configuration for long times. This allows us to study the time-dependent dressing process of the movable mirror interacting with the field, and its dynamics leading to a local equilibrium dressed configuration. Also, in order to explore the effect of the radiation pressure on both sides of the movable mirror, we generalize the effective field-mirror Hamiltonian and previous results to the case of two cavities sharing the same mobile boundary. This leads us to address, in the appropriate limit, the dynamical dressing problem of a single mobile wall, bounded by a harmonic potential, in the vacuum space.

• Received 4 July 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.045007