Quantum Rabi Model Beyond the Electric Dipole Approximation

We investigate a controlled beyond-electric-dipole extension of the quantum Rabi model in which the leading electric-dipole interaction is supplemented by an electric-quadrupole contribution. A central issue is the parity selection rule: for two exact atomic parity eigenstates of opposite parity, an electric-quadrupole transition matrix element vanishes. We therefore do not interpret the additional longitudinal coupling as an E2 transition between an opposite-parity pair. Instead, we consider an inversion-asymmetric (or parity-mixed) two-level system for which the two retained states may have different diagonal quadrupole moments. Projection of the multipolar interaction then produces a state-dependent term proportional to σz(a + a†), while the ordinary transition dipole produces the transverse term proportional to σx(a + a†). A state-independent quadrupolar contribution is removed by a bosonic displacement, leaving the effective Hamiltonian H =ωa†a+∆σz/2+gσx(a+a†)+gQσz(a+a†). This construction connects the beyond-dipole physical problem to the well-studied class of Rabi models with simultaneous transverse and longitudinal coupling, including asymmetric or biased Rabi models. We make this relation explicit by a constant spin rotation, which maps the model to a biased Rabi Hamiltonian with effective coupling κ = √g2 +g2Q and bias δ = ∆gQ/(2κ). We then derive the corresponding second-order Bargmann differential equation and solve its exceptional polynomial sector using a Zhang-type functional Bethe ansatz. The resulting Bethe equations, root-sum constraint, exceptional energy branches, and the first nontrivial parameter condition are obtained explicitly. In the limit gQ → 0, the construction continuously recovers the ordinary Rabi exceptional sector. From an experimental perspective, the connection with demonstrated quadrupolar light--matter coupling in engineered quantum systems suggests that the present framework may have relevance for spectroscopic studies of beyond-electric-dipole interactions, although a direct experimental realization of the specific effective model considered here remains to be established [20].