Intracavity Photon Statistics from Correlated Molecular Electronic Structure

Abstract: Quantum optics characterizes light through photon correlations, but ab initio cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) has only calculated raw field moments at present. In this study, intracavity photon statistics of cavity-coupled molecules are computed from QED coupled-cluster (QED-CCSD-22) densities and validated against exact diagonalization of the Pauli-Fierz Hamiltonian. A change of coordinate origin or dipole convention displaces the ground state coherently, so second-order and higher cumulants of the cavity field are well defined even for molecular ions. The photon subsystem of QED Hartree-Fock is exactly coherent, so the invariant statistics measure electron-photon correlation. The field fluctuations are super-Poissonian, and their degree of second-order coherence is set by the cavity frequency rather than by the coupling strength, falling from 18.5 to 4.9 for H2 as the cavity is detuned from 5 to 20 eV. A parity selection rule makes the sign of the third cumulant a probe of the orientation of the molecular charge asymmetry along the cavity polarization.