S. Felicetti

We demonstrate the emergence of selective $k$-photon interactions in the strong and ultrastrong coupling regimes of the quantum Rabi model with a Stark coupling term. In particular, we show that the interplay between the rotating and counter-rotating terms produces multi-photon interactions whose resonance frequencies depend, due to the Stark term, on the state of the bosonic mode. We develop an analytical framework to explain these $k$-photon interactions by using time-dependent perturbation theory. Finally, we propose a method to achieve the quantum simulation of the quantum Rabi model with a Stark term by using the internal and vibrational degrees of freedom of a trapped ion, and demonstrate its performance with numerical simulations considering realistic physical parameters.

Two-photon processes have so far been considered only as resulting from frequency-matched second-order expansions of light-matter interaction, with consequently small coupling strengths. However, a variety of novel physical phenomena arises when such coupling values become comparable with the system characteristic frequencies. Here, we propose a realistic implementation of two-photon quantum Rabi and Dicke models in trapped-ion technologies. In this case, effective two-phonon processes can be explored in all relevant parameter regimes. In particular, we show that an ion chain under bichromatic laser drivings exhibits a rich dynamics and highly counterintuitive spectral features, such as interaction-induced spectral collapse.

We propose the quantum simulation of the quantum Rabi model in all parameter regimes by means of detuned bichromatic sideband excitations of a single trapped ion. We show that current setups can reproduce, in particular, the ultrastrong and deep strong coupling regimes of such a paradigmatic light-matter interaction. Furthermore, associated with these extreme dipolar regimes, we study the controlled generation and detection of their entangled ground states by means of adiabatic methods. Ion traps have arguably performed the first quantum simulation of the Jaynes-Cummings model, a restricted regime of the quantum Rabi model where the rotating-wave approximation holds. We show that one can go beyond and experimentally investigate the quantum simulation of coupling regimes of the quantum Rabi model that are difficult to achieve with natural dipolar interactions.