Collapse and revivals in the Jaynes-Cummings model: An analysis based on the Mollow transformation

Collapse and revivals in the Jaynes-Cummings model are studied within the context of the Mollow transformation for a single-mode coherent-state cavity field. The Mollow-transformed Jaynes-Cummings Hamiltonian has two atom-field terms, one corresponding to a classical field and the other to a quantized field driving the atomic transition. As such it maps onto the complementary problem of an atom in an optical cavity, whose field is initially in the vacuum state, driven by an external classical field. Both problems have the same atomic-state dynamics. It is shown that the revivals can be associated with two distinct properties of the quantized field of the transformed Hamiltonian. Revivals occurring at even (odd) multiples of the revival time are correlated with field states that are close to the initial field state and for which the average energy in the field is a minimum (maximum). Using semiclassical dressed states, we are able to map the problem for the field states onto one involving two uncoupled oscillators driven by off-resonant fields, provided effects related to dispersion are neglected. Analytic expressions for the photon number distribution of the transformed cavity field, including dispersion, are obtained for the even revival times.