Decohering power of thermal fluctuating electromagnetic field with a boundary

摘要

In this paper, we analyze the decohering power behaviors for an atom immersed in a thermal bath of fluctuating electromagnetic field in the presence of a perfectly reflecting plane boundary. Firstly, we analytically solve the master equation that governs the system evolution. Then, we discuss the behaviors of decohering power for an atom affected by thermal fluctuating electromagnetic field. It is found that the behaviors of decohering power are dependent on the field temperature, atomic position and polarization. Decohering power fluctuates to relatively stable values with the increasing atom's distance from the boundary, which suggests a possible way of detecting the vacuum fluctuating and boundary effect. Additional conditions on the electromagnetic field give one more freedom to manipulate the variations of decohering power. Decohering power variations can efficiently reflect the behaviors of quantum coherence affected by electromagnetic vacuum fluctuation, and it is shown that quantum coherence can be effectively enhanced with the presence of a reflecting boundary.