Strongly interacting photons in arrays of dissipative nonlinear cavities under a frequency-dependent incoherent pumping
José Lebreuilly, Iacopo Carusotto, Michiel Wouters
We report a theoretical study of a quantum optical model consisting of an array of strongly nonlinear cavities incoherently pumped by an ensemble of population-inverted two-level atoms. Projective methods are used to eliminate the atomic dynamics and write a generalized master equation for the photonic degrees of freedom only, where the frequency-dependence of gain introduces non-Markovian features. In the simplest single cavity configuration, this pumping scheme allows for the selective generation of Fock states with a well-defined photon number. For many cavities in a weakly non-Markovian limit, the non-equilibrium steady state recovers a Grand-Canonical statistical ensemble at a temperature determined by the effective atomic linewidth. For a two-cavity system in the strongly nonlinear regime, signatures of a Mott state with one photon per cavity are found.
arXiv:1502.04016?context=cond-mat•Feb 13, 2015•1 citation