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Physical Review A

Dynamical response and switching of an optically bistable anharmonic oscillator

Burke Ritchie, Charles M. Bowden

Published Oct 1, 1985• 15 citations
Publisher

Abstract

The dynamical solution of the driven classical anharmonic (AH) oscillator is obtained through a region of optical bistability. The dynamical solution is observed to switch from the lowest to highest steady-state (SS) root near a SS turning point with evidence of critical slowing down. The solution of a widely used multiple-photon version of the AH model is also obtained and is found to give qualitatively similar behavior. The average number of photons observed dramatically increases in the bistable region and exhibits damped oscillations.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.32.2293

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The dynamical solution of the driven classical anharmonic (AH) oscillator is obtained through a region of optical bistability. The dynamical solution is observed to switch from the lowest to highest steady-state (SS) root near a SS turning point with evidence of critical slowing down. The solution of a widely used multiple-photon version of the AH model is also obtained and is found to give qualitatively similar behavior. The average number of photons observed dramatically increases in the bistable region and exhibits damped oscillations.
We consider a driven damped anharmonic oscillator that classically leads to a bistable steady state and to hysteresis. The quantum counterpart for this system has an exact analytical solution in the steady state that does not display any bistability or hysteresis. We use quantum-state diffusion theory to describe this system and to provide a new perspective on the lack of hysteresis in the quantum regime so as to study in detail the quantum to classical transition. The analysis is also relevant to measurements of a single periodically driven electron in a Penning trap where hysteresis has been observed.
We solve numerically the simplest Fokker-Planck equation which describes the effects of amplitude noise in absorbitive optical bistability. When the semiclassical solution exhibits critical slowing down, the probability distribution becomes two-peaked in a sizable time interval during the approach to the one-peaked steady-state distribution. The switching time undergoes considerable fluctuations, and on the average it is shorter than predicted by semiclassical theory. These noise effects seem accessible to experimental observation.
We consider the quantum model of a driven anharmonic oscillator, in the presence of dissipation, and present an exact analytic solution for the corresponding Wigner function in the steady-state regime. This provides explicit phase-space images of the resulting state of the cavity mode, and allows us to understand how the quantum interference is built up into it. The photon number probability distribution is calculated and analysed as well. We monitor the transition from the semiclassical to extreme quantum regime of operation, and identify qualitative changes, where the conventional characteristics of the model, such as bistability or turning points, become meaningless.