Dissipative Systems in Quantum Optics

R. Loudon

Christopher J. Mertens

Ian S. Osborne

Quantum Optics Our textbook understanding of quantum systems tends to come from modeling these systems isolated from the environment. However, an emerging focus is understanding how many-body quantum systems behave when interacting with their surroundings and how they subsequently become dissipative, or non-Hermitian, systems. Ozturk et al. formed a quantum condensate of light by trapping photons in an optical cavity, a system that is naturally dissipative. By altering the trapping conditions, they demonstrated that the system provides a powerful platform with which to explore the complex dynamics and phase transitions occurring in dissipative quantum systems. Science , this issue p. [88][1] [1]: /lookup/doi/10.1126/science.abe9869

S. T. Gevorgyan, V. O. Chaltykyan

We show that in an open optical system with one-photon dissipation formation of a stationary even coherent superposition state is possible, which is a consequence of the fact that the lifetime of the optical system in a coherent superposition state is different for even and odd states.

Valentin Yu. Mylnikov, S. O. Potashin, Grigorii S. Sokolovskii +1 more

Nowadays, dissipative phase transition (DPT) attracts a great deal of interest from the physics and quantum optics community. It is characterized by abrupt changes of the physical observables on the parameters of the system, such as a dissipation and drive rates as well as coupling constants. The increased attention to the DPT roots in significant development of a new research area of quantum optics, known as reservoir engineering, which allows to obtain a wide range of controllable nonequilibrium quantum systems. A prime example of such a system, which we will study here, is an optical oscillator with two-photon drive and two-photon dissipation (Fig 1(a)). The immediate practical application of such a model is the qubit platform based on the quantum Schrödinger cat states which is applicable for universal quantum computation [1]. However, the quantum and dissipative nature of such a system significantly complicates its consideration beyond the mean-field description. In statistical physics, one can apply the well-developed Landau theory, which is used for a wide range of equilibrium phenomena. Here, we rigorously demonstrate that the nonequilibrium DPT that arises in an optical oscillator with two-photon drive and two-photon dissipation can be mapped onto a nonlinear classical oscillator in a colored-noise environment in regions distant from the critical point. Furthermore, using Fokker-Plank approach, we develop a description of the quantum critical region near the critical point, where strong quantum fluctuations destroy mean-field treatment.