Decay dynamics of a giant atom in a structured bath with broken time-reversal symmetry

Abstract

Abstract We study in this paper the decay dynamics of a two-level giant atom, which is coupled to a quasi-one-dimensional sawtooth lattice exposed to uniform synthetic magnetic fluxes. In the case where the two sublattices have a large detuning, the giant atom is effectively coupled to a single-band structured bath with flux-controlled energy band and time-reversal symmetry. This feature significantly affects the decay dynamics of the giant atom as well as the propagation of the emitted photon. In particular, the giant atom can exhibit chiral spontaneous emission and allow for nonreciprocal delayed light, which are however unattainable by coupling a small atom to this lattice. Giant atoms with different frequencies can be designed to emit photons towards different directions and with different group velocities. Our results pave the way towards engineering quantum networks and manipulating giant-atom interference effects.