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arXiv:2109.10516 · Physical Review A

Antibunching via cooling by heating

M. Tahir Naseem, Özgür Esat Müstecaplıoğlu

Published Jan 3, 2022• 10 citations
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Abstract

We investigate statistics of the photon (phonon) field undergoing linear and nonlinear damping processes. An effective two-photon (phonon) nonlinear ``cooling by heating'' process is realized from linear damping by spectral filtering of the heat baths present in the system. This cooling process driven by incoherent quantum thermal noise can create quantum states of the photon field. In fact, for high temperatures of the spectrally filtered heat baths, sub-Poissonian statistics with strong antibunching in the photon (phonon) field are reported. This notion of the emergence and control of quantumness by incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied to a quantum system comprised of a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator or analogous optomechanical setting. Our analysis may provide a promising direction for the preparation and protection of quantum features via nonlinear damping that can be controlled with incoherent thermal quantum noise.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.105.012201

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We investigate statistics of the photon (phonon) field undergoing linear and nonlinear damping processes. An effective two-photon (phonon) nonlinear ``cooling by heating'' process is realized from linear damping by spectral filtering of the heat baths present in the system. This cooling process driven by incoherent quantum thermal noise can create quantum states of the photon field. In fact, for high temperatures of the spectrally filtered heat baths, sub-Poissonian statistics with strong antibunching in the photon (phonon) field are reported. This notion of the emergence and control of quantumness by incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied to a quantum system comprised of a two-level system and a harmonic oscillator or analogous optomechanical setting. Our analysis may provide a promising direction for the preparation and protection of quantum features via nonlinear damping that can be controlled with incoherent thermal quantum noise.
Low-frequency classical 1/f1/f1/f noise and quantum noise from low-temperature phonon modes are ubiquitous across various experimental platforms, and are usually considered a hindrance for quantum technological applications. Here we show that the simultaneous action of classical 1/f1/f1/f noise and a low-temperature phonon bath on a nonlinear oscillator can result in the generation of nonclassical antibunched radiation without the need for any additional drive. The 1/f1/f1/f noise itself provides the source of energy for generation of photons, while the phonon bath prevents heating up to infinite temperature and takes the nonlinear oscillator to a noise-averaged nonequilibrium steady state. The photon current in this nonequilibrium steady state may be detected by a standard wide-band detector. For sufficient nonlinearity and frequency dependence of the effective noise spectrum, the detected radiation can be antibunched. This opens the possibility to turn two of the most ubiquitous intrinsic noises in experimental platforms from a hindrance to a resource. It shows that wasteful heat from unavoidable noises can be converted into useful radiation. These results are based on the Redfield equation, which provides a rigorously derived general approach to treat any type of weak noise in a quantum system, specified only via the noise spectral function, as we discuss in detail.
The ability to tailor photon-number statistics is central to the generation and control of nonclassical states of light. Here, we investigate how Fock-state filtering of squeezed coherent states can be used to engineer their photon statistics. We consider the selective removal of the m=0m=0m=0 and m=1m=1m=1 Fock components and show that this process can enhance the sub-Poissonian character of the field, depending on the coherent amplitude. We then analyze the evolution of these engineered states in a thermal environment. Although all states eventually relax toward thermal statistics, the signatures of the filtering process may persist over a significant part of the evolution, while the purity of the filtered states is rapidly degraded by incoherent population redistribution. Our results illustrate both the potential and the limitations of photon-number engineering in realistic, dissipative settings.
We introduce the idea of actually cooling quantum systems by means of incoherent thermal light, hence giving rise to a counter-intuitive mechanism of "cooling by heating". In this effect, the mere incoherent occupation of a quantum mechanical mode serves as a trigger to enhance the coupling between other modes. This notion of effectively rendering states more coherent by driving with incoherent thermal quantum noise is applied here to the opto-mechanical setting, where this effect occurs most naturally. We discuss two ways of describing this situation, one of them making use of stochastic sampling of Gaussian quantum states with respect to stationary classical stochastic processes. The potential of experimentally demonstrating this counter-intuitive effect in opto-mechanical systems with present technology is sketched.
Recently, the thermodynamics of open quantum systems driven by light fields has been investigated in the framework of quantum heat engines, whose output work can be measured as a spectroscopic signal. In this work, we investigate a four-level quantum heat engine that generates cascaded entangled photon pairs, treating the hot bath as an incoherent thermal pump and focusing on the correlation statistics of the output work and photon indistinguishability. We show that the dissipative nonequilibrium dynamics of this thermodynamic open quantum system can be reconstructed by correlation measurements under carefully mediated optical control. Comparing our findings with the traditional coherently pumped model, we find that the thermal pumping has the potential to generate nonclassical correlations resulting in photon indistinguishability, displaying an advantage in probing the nonequilibrium effects induced by the baths at different temperatures. Our work also demonstrates that incoherent pumping can optimize such correlations in output work beyond the classical limit. Lastly, we show that nonclassical correlations and resonant power at steady state cannot be simultaneously maximized in the weak coupling regime. Published by the American Physical Society 2024
In this thesis three different approaches to control the quantum statistics in nanoscopic devices are investigated. In the first part of the thesis, mechanical oscillations in solid state devices are manipulated by an external laser to show bistabilities, coherent amplification, and enhanced damping. The dynamics is controlled by the frequency of the external laser. This study is performed in a semiclassical approximation, where expectation values of operators are factorized. These effects are used to show the similarities and differences between optomechanical systems and phonon cavities. In the regime of coherent amplification of phonons the theoretical description is extended to a fully quantum mechanical model. This reveals additional resonances due to collective processes that can be addressed via the frequency of the external laser. In the second part, a quantum light source is considered for manipulation of the emission statistics of a second quantum optical system serving as target. A Jaynes-Cummings system is used as a source that may be tuned from nonclassical to thermal emission via the pump strength. The target consists of a cavity with two emitters. The nature of the imprinted statistics is studied by higher order correlation functions. The resulting statistics deviates strongly from thermal, coherent or antibunched statistics. The third part considers coherent self feedback with time-delay, which is motivated by classical Pyragas control. The finite time delay is used as control parameter. The matrix product state evolution in the picture of the quantum stochastic Schrödinger equation is employed as a systematic way of dealing with quantum self-feedback. In this thesis, the approach is extended to include higher order terms in the time evolution operator. This is done systematically so that arbitrary order can be included enabling faster numerical evaluation. This extension of the matrix product state evolution method allows to investigate efficiently the emission statistics of a single mode cavity containing two emitters. It is shown that feedback can enhance antibunching in the light field while also counter-intuitively increasing the number of emitted photons at the same time. Expressing the time evolution operator as a sum of sparse matrices allows to include time dependent Hamiltonians in an efficient manner. Considering the pulsed excitation of a two level emitter, it is demonstrated that emission statistics may be tuned via feedback. This allows to switch between single photon emission and enhanced two photon emission.
The statistical fluctuations of light can, under certain circumstances, exhibit a number of interesting nonclassical features. These include photon antibunching, sub-Poissonian statistics, and squeezing, all of which exist only in a quantum field. The three effects are distinct, and do not necessarily go together, although the first two are sometimes mistakenly treated as interchangeable. Both photon antibunching and sub-Poissonian statistics have been observed in experiments on resonance fluorescence from single atoms, which is described. Squeezing has not yet been seen experimentally, although many nonlinear processes are expected to give rise to it. The squeezed state can be recognized in heterodyne or homodyne experiments, where the squeezing becomes manifest as sub-Poissonian photon fluctuations.