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arXiv:1910.03499 · Physical Review A

Dissipative time crystal in an asymmetric nonlinear photonic dimer

Kilian Seibold, R. Rota, Vincenzo Savona

Published Mar 30, 2020• 80 citations
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Abstract

We investigate the behavior of two coupled nonlinear photonic cavities, in the presence of inhomogeneous coherent driving and local dissipations. By solving numerically the quantum master equation, either by diagonalizing the Liouvillian superoperator or by using the approximated truncated Wigner approach, we extrapolate the properties of the system in a thermodynamic limit of large photon occupation. When the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation predicts a unique parametrically unstable steady-state solution, the open quantum many-body system presents highly nonclassical properties and its dynamics exhibits the long-lived Josephson-like oscillations typical of dissipative time crystals, as indicated by the presence of purely imaginary eigenvalues in the spectrum of the Liouvillian superoperator in the thermodynamic limit.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.101.033839

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We investigate the behavior of two coupled nonlinear photonic cavities, in the presence of inhomogeneous coherent driving and local dissipations. By solving numerically the quantum master equation, either by diagonalizing the Liouvillian superoperator or by using the approximated truncated Wigner approach, we extrapolate the properties of the system in a thermodynamic limit of large photon occupation. When the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii equation predicts a unique parametrically unstable steady-state solution, the open quantum many-body system presents highly nonclassical properties and its dynamics exhibits the long-lived Josephson-like oscillations typical of dissipative time crystals, as indicated by the presence of purely imaginary eigenvalues in the spectrum of the Liouvillian superoperator in the thermodynamic limit.
We theoretically investigate the critical properties of a single driven-dissipative nonlinear photon mode. In a well-defined thermodynamical limit of large excitation numbers, the exact quantum solution describes a first-order phase transition in the regime where semiclassical theory predicts optical bistability. We study the behavior of the complex spectral gap associated with the Liouvillian superoperator of the corresponding master equation. We show that in this limit the Liouvillian gap vanishes exponentially and that the bimodality of the photon Wigner function disappears. The connection between the considered thermodynamical limit of large photon numbers for the single-mode cavity and the thermodynamical limit of many cavities for a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard system is discussed.
Nonequilibrium dissipative phase transition, arising from the competition of cooperative behavior and coherent field driving, discovered in the 1970s by Narducci et al. and Walls et al., has been found to exhibit time-crystal behavior when the driving field exceeds the cooperative decay rate. This was seen through the study of the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian superoperator that describes the joint effect of drive and cooperativity. The cooperative decay depends on the nature of the reservoir correlations. If the reservoir correlations have phase-sensitive behavior, then the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian will be different. We investigate the time-crystal behavior of the nonequilibrium dissipative phase transitions under the influence of a squeezed vacuum reservoir. We analyze the steady-state phase diagram as a function of the control parameter and demonstrate that increasing the squeezing strength sharpens the dissipative phase transition. Spectral analysis of the Liouvillian reveals gap closings and the emergence of purely imaginary eigenvalues in the thermodynamic limit, indicating the time-crystal phase. We find that the real parts of subleading eigenvalues exhibit nonmonotonic behavior with increasing squeezing, reflecting the sensitivity of relaxation dynamics to the reservoir properties. Time-domain simulations confirm that the oscillation frequencies correspond to the imaginary parts of the Liouvillian eigenvalues. We also present results on quantum fluctuations in the time-crystal phase. Our results call attention to the study of time crystals in models of cooperativity based on engineered environments.
We investigate two coupled nonlinear cavities that are coherently driven in a dissipative environment. We perform semiclassical, numerical, and analytical quantum studies of this dimer model when both cavities are symmetrically driven. In the semiclassical analysis, we find steady-state solutions with different photon occupations in two cavities. Such states can be considered analogs of the closed system double-well symmetry-breaking states. We analyze the occurrence and properties of these localized states in the system parameter space and examine how the symmetry-breaking states, in the form of a bistable pair, are associated with the single-cavity bistable behavior. In a full quantum calculation of the master equation dynamics that includes quantum fluctuations, the symmetry-breaking states and bistability disappear due to the quantum fluctuations. In the quantum trajectory picture, we observe enhanced quantum jumps and switching, which indicate the presence of the underlying semiclassical symmetry-breaking states. Finally, we present a set of analytical solutions for the steady-state correlation functions by using the complex PPP representation and discuss its regime of validity.
Abstract We investigate the steady-state quantum phases and associated collective phenomena of an open Tavis–Cummings (TC) model driven by a two-photon source. The standard (non-dissipative) TC model describes the quantum phases of an ensemble of N q two-level quantum emitters interacting with a single-mode electromagnetic field. The interplay among coherent driving, dissipation, and dipole interactions of the open TC model results in emergent collective phenomena, leading to a dissipative or non-equilibrium phase transition from the normal to the superradiant phase. We solve the Liouvillian equation analytically using the semi-classical mean-field approximation. We carry out stability analysis of the steady-state phases and determine the phase boundary. The use of Holstein–Primakoff transformation in the thermodynamic limit N q → ∞ reduces the system to an effective coupled-oscillator model, the solution of which yields collective modes.
The nonequilibrium dissipative phase transition, arising from the competition of cooperative behavior and coherent field driving, discovered in the 1970s by Narducci et al. [Phys. Rev. A18, 1571 (1978)] and Walls et al. [Prog. Theor. Phys. Suppl.64, 307 (1978)], has been found to exhibit time-crystal behavior when the driving field exceeds the cooperative decay rate. This was seen through the study of the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian superoperator that describes the joint effect of drive and cooperativity. The cooperative decay depends on the nature of the reservoir correlations. If the reservoir correlations have phase-sensitive behavior, then the eigenvalues of the Liouvillian will be different. We investigate the time-crystal behavior of the nonequilibrium dissipative phase transitions under the influence of a squeezed vacuum reservoir. We analyze the steady-state phase diagram as a function of the control parameter and demonstrate that increasing the squeezing strength sharpens the dissipative phase transition. Spectral analysis of the Liouvillian reveals gap closings and the emergence of purely imaginary eigenvalues in the thermodynamic limit, indicating the time-crystal phase. We find that the real parts of subleading eigenvalues exhibit nonmonotonic behavior with increasing squeezing, reflecting the sensitivity of relaxation dynamics to the reservoir properties. Time-domain simulations confirm that the oscillation frequencies correspond to the imaginary parts of the Liouvillian eigenvalues. We also present results on quantum fluctuations in the time-crystal phase. Our results call attention to the study of time crystals in models of cooperativity based on engineered environments.
Parametrically driven Kerr nonlinear quantum oscillator plays a central role in quantum optics, superconducting circuits, and in engineered light-matter interactions. For the development of future quantum technologies, it is crucial to understand the behavior of this quantum system under realistic dissipative conditions. The objective of this thesis is to investigate the phase-space dynamics of a dissipative Kerr nonlinear oscillator under different driving regimes and corresponding dissipation channels, with a particular focus on the emergence of nonclassical features in phase space. The aim is also to understand how nonlinearity and different driving mechanisms influence quantum properties such as coherence, nonclassicality, and phase-space structure. The analysis was carried out using the Wigner phase-space formalism and numerical simulations of the Lindblad master equation. The results show that in the case of finite nonlinearity the coherence time is prolonged compared to the harmonic case. In the single photon regime, the interplay between the photon drive and nonlinearity can lead to coherence revivals after which the system relaxes into a squeezed steady state. In the two photon and dissipation regime, the system exhibits parity-protected dynamics, leading to very long coherence times.