Title: Rabi Oscillations in Space and Time
Abstract: Rabi oscillations are the embodiment of strong light-matter coupling. They describe the cyclic (Hamiltonian) coupling between two quantum modes, with the population sloshing back and forth between them.
Yet, since-or maybe because-they are so fundamental, they are easily recognized in places where they do not take place. Their manifestations at the multiphoton level have also been greatly presumed as natural yet much less directly investigated. Here, I will discuss how the alleged occurence of Rabi oscilla-tions, even at the one-photon level and in simple and assumedly well-known systems, can be revisited in a less straightforward way than has just been painted, with the unexpected result that their manifestation can be seen as a bridge with other fundamental aspects of condensed-matter physics when trading space for time, and how this bears consequences for our understanding of such basic notions as single-photon emission. I will in particular put under scrutiny recent experiments which hunt for Rabi oscillations in transient dynamics [arXiv:2305.15827, arXiv:2305.18776], to provide alternative or complementary-at any rates, more general-descriptions, which become fruitful when turning to multiphoton physics.
Time allowing, I will also describe the special and unsuspected role of Rabi oscillation in the spacetime physics of polariton wavepacket propagation.