Dynamics of the Generation of the Pure Two-atom Squeezed State

Abstract

Time evolution of a two-atom system damped by a broad-band squeezed vacuum is examined. We show that in the squeezed vacuum the collective atomic levels are no longer eigenstates of the system. Diagonalizing the density matrix of the system, we find new ‘dressed’ eigenstates of the system and show that the evolution of the population of the dressed states is characterized by three different relaxation times, two of them strongly modified by the squeezed correlations. We find that the effect of the squeezed vacuum on the system appears on a time-scale larger than the shortest relaxation time of the system, and the relaxation time of the system to the pure two-atom squeezed state is strongly dependent on the intensity N of the squeezed vacuum and increases with increasing N.