Theory versus experiment for vacuum Rabi oscillations in lossy cavities (II): Direct test of uniqueness of vacuum

Abstract

The paper continues the analysis of vacuum Rabi oscillations we started in Part I [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 79}, 033836 (2009)]. Here we concentrate on experimental consequences for cavity QED of two different classes of representations of harmonic oscillator Lie algebras. The zero-temperature master equation, derived in Part I for irreducible representations of the algebra, is reformulated in a reducible representation that models electromagnetic fields by a gas of harmonic oscillator wave packets. The representation is known to introduce automatic regularizations that in irreducible representations would have to be justified by ad hoc arguments. Predictions based on this representation are characterized in thermodynamic limit by a single parameter $\varsigma$, responsible for collapses and revivals of Rabi oscillations in exact vacuum. Collapses and revivals disappear in the limit $\varsigma\to\infty$. Observation of a finite $\varsigma$ would mean that cavity quantum fields are described by a non-Wightmanian theory, where vacuum states are zero-temperature Bose-Einstein condensates of a finite-particle bosonic oscillator gas and, thus, are non-unique. The data collected in the experiment of Brune {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf{76}}, 1800 (1996)] are consistent with any $\varsigma>400$.