Non-equilibrium states of a photon cavity pumped by an atomic beam (Q2448280)

The paper treats a cavity that is coupled to a beam of two-level atoms via a purely-dephasing interaction. It is assumed throughout that at most one of the atoms is present in the cavity, such that the system reduces to a variant of an exactly solvable pure-dephasing spin-boson model. However, for this particular system, the initial cavity state for the \(n\)-th atom will depend on the previous \(n-1\) atoms that have already passed the system, thus yielding a non-trivial problem. The authors calculate the total number of photons in the cavity for the cavity-atom problem. In addition, they allow for the loss or gain of photons in the cavity by means of a phenomenological Lindblad master equation with effective loss and gain rates, and also in this case solve for the mean photon number. Without photon loss or gain, the number of photons in the cavity increases with respect to the initial state (though not monotonously). With losses and gain, a stationary state is found. These results are rigorously shown in chapters 2 and 3. Afterwards, the variation of the total energy is considered both for the closed and open system. Finally, the authors consider the change of the relative cavity entropy with respect to the thermal state and find that for a closed cavity-atom system it is proportional to the energy pumped into the cavity. Since the latter is positive with respect to the initial state, this is interpreted as a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. The paper appears technically sound and uses a very exact language. It is thus suitable for readers with a very mathematical background.