Spontaneous emission from driven polar quantum systems

Quantum Physics [Submitted on 20 Apr 2026] Spontaneous emission from driven polar quantum systems Piotr Gładysz, Karolina Słowik, Francesco V. Pepe We investigate spontaneous radiative processes in a driven polar two-level system whose interaction with the laser field is dominated by broken inversion symmetry rather than by the usual transition dipole coupling. Using a polaron transformation, we derive the dressed eigenstates of the atom-laser system and show that their longitudinal coupling reshapes the spectrum into two displaced harmonic ladders. We then analyze spontaneous transitions induced by a bosonic reservoir, and obtain transition rates that depend on both the laser parameters and the overlap between displaced field states. In the few-photon regime, we identify conditions under which spontaneous emission from the excited state can be strongly suppressed, thereby extending its lifetime, as well as regimes where the ladder structure enables spontaneous absorption from the ground state. In the semiclassical limit of a strong coherent drive, we derive compact analytical expressions for the total transition rates and show that they are governed by Bessel-function weights associated with multiphoton channels. Our results show how broken inversion symmetry qualitatively modifies decay dynamics and radiative cascades, and they establish driven polar quantum systems as a platform for controlling spontaneous light emission beyond the standard inversion-symmetric setting. Comments: 12 pages, 6 figures Subjects: Quantum Physics (quant-ph) Cite as: arXiv:2604.18763 [quant-ph]   (or arXiv:2604.18763v1 [quant-ph] for this version)   https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2604.18763 Focus to learn more Submission history From: Francesco Pepe [view email] [v1] Mon, 20 Apr 2026 19:16:27 UTC (411 KB) Access Paper: view license Current browse context: quant-ph < prev   |   next > new | recent | 2026-04 References & Citations INSPIRE HEP NASA ADS Google Scholar Semantic Scholar Export BibTeX Citation Bookmark Bibliographic Tools Bibliographic and Citation Tools Bibliographic Explorer Toggle Bibliographic Explorer (What is the Explorer?) Connected Papers Toggle Connected Papers (What is Connected Papers?) Litmaps Toggle Litmaps (What is Litmaps?) scite.ai Toggle scite Smart Citations (What are Smart Citations?) Code, Data, Media Demos Related Papers About arXivLabs Which authors of this paper are endorsers? | Disable MathJax (What is MathJax?)