Past exam of the advanced quantum physics course of the University of Cambridge / 2022 / Section B / 6 / e / Solution

The thermal oscillator occupation is the Bose-Einstein distribution. With the rate notation ${\Gamma }_{\eta \sigma }$ for a transition from $\sigma$ to $\eta$, the master equation for the up population isAt thermal equilibrium, assuming ${\Gamma }_0>0$, vanishing time derivative is detailed balance between the two spin states. HenceorTogether with normalization, this gives $p_{\uparrow }=1/(1+e^{\beta \hslash \Omega })$ and $p_{\downarrow }=e^{\beta \hslash \Omega }/(1+e^{\beta \hslash \Omega })$, the Boltzmann distribution for the energy eigenvalues $\pm \hslash \Omega /2$. At zero temperature, absorption vanishes and emission relaxes the spin into its down ground state.

The nonzero-rate condition is necessary: if $\lambda =0$ or $g(\Omega )=0$, both rates vanish, so every initial pair of populations is stationary within this approximation. In that case stationarity alone cannot imply a thermal distribution. The equilibrium conclusion therefore presumes coupling to resonant oscillator modes.