Nonequilibrium transient dynamics of photon statistics

Abstract

We investigate the transient dynamics of photon statistics through two-time correlation functions for optical fields. We find that the transient correlations at different time t yield a smooth transition from antibunching to bunching photon statistics in the weak system-environment coupling regime. In the strong-coupling regime, the two-time correlations exhibit bunching-antibunching oscillations that persists both in the transient process and in the steady-state limit. The photon bunching-antibunching oscillations is a manifestation of strong non-Markovian dynamics, where the system remains in nonequilibrium from its environment. We also find that the antibunching to bunching transition in the weak-coupling regime and the bunching-antibunching oscillation in the strong-coupling regime are strongly influenced by the initial environment temperature.