We introduce a quantum-coherence driven many-body photonic nanostructure, in which we observe self-organized phase-transitions to a new type of non-potential light localization, resilient to dissipation, fluctuations, and nonlinear interactions.
Many-body systems constructed of quantum-optical building blocks can now be realized in experimental platforms ranging from exciton-polariton fluids to ultracold Rydberg gases, establishing a fascinating interface between traditional many-body physics and the driven-dissipative, nonequilibrium setting of cavity QED. At this interface, the standard techniques and intuitions of both fields are called into question, obscuring issues as fundamental as the role of fluctuations, dimensionality, and symmetry on the nature of collective behavior and phase transitions. Here, we study the driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model, a minimal description of numerous atomic, optical, and solid-state systems in which particle loss is countered by coherent driving. Despite being a lattice version of optical bistability, a foundational and patently nonequilibrium model of cavity QED, the steady state possesses an emergent equilibrium description in terms of a classical Ising model. We establish this picture by making new connections between traditional techniques from many-body physics (functional integrals) and quantum optics (the system-size expansion). To lowest order in a controlled expansion---organized around the experimentally relevant limit of weak interactions---the full quantum dynamics reduces to nonequilibrium Langevin equations, which support a phase transition described by model A of the Hohenberg-Halperin classification. Numerical simulations of the Langevin equations corroborate this picture, revealing that canonical behavior associated with the Ising model manifests readily in simple experimental observables.
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.
Driven-dissipative quantum many-body systems, i.e., many-particle systems where quantum coherent dynamics and dissipative effects occur on the same footing, can constitute a promising platform to initiate a systematic classification of quantum dynamical criticality. In this work, the authors show that both nonequilibrium and quantum features can be simultaneously present and persist in the low-frequency properties of a critical one-dimensional driven open Bose gas, and no effective equilibrium description is applicable for this novel type of nonequilibrium quantum criticality.
Interactions between photons (nonlinearities) enable a powerful form of control over the state of light. This control has enabled technologies such as light sources at new wavelengths, ultra-short optical pulses, frequency-comb metrology systems, even quantum light sources. Common to a wide variety of nonlinear optical technologies is an equilibrium between an energy source, such as an external laser, and dissipation, such as radiation loss or absorption. In the vast majority of these systems, the coupling between the system and the outside world (which leads to loss) is well-described as ``Markovian,'' meaning that the outside world has no memory of its past state. In this work, we introduce a class of driven-dissipative systems in which a nonlinear cavity experiences non-Markovian coupling to the outside world. In the classical regime, we show that these non-Markovian cavities can have extremely low thresholds for nonlinear effects, as well as self-pulsing instabilities at THz rates, and rich phase diagrams with alternating regions of stability and instability. In the quantum regime, we show how these system, when implemented on state-of-the-art platforms, can enable generation of strongly squeezed cavity states with intensity fluctuations that can be more than 15 dB below the classical limit, in contrast to the Markovian driven-dissipative cavity, in which the limit is 3 dB. In the regime of few-photon nonlinearity, such non-Markovian cavities can enable a deterministic protocol to generate Fock states of high order, which are long-desired, but still elusive at optical frequencies. We expect that exploiting non-Markovian couplings in nonlinear optics should in the future lead to even richer possibilities than those discussed here for both classical and quantum light manipulations.
Interactions between photons (nonlinearities) enable a powerful form of control over the state of light. This control has enabled technologies such as light sources at new wavelengths, ultra-short optical pulses, frequency-comb metrology systems, even quantum light sources. Common to a wide variety of nonlinear optical technologies is an equilibrium between an energy source, such as an external laser, and dissipation, such as radiation loss or absorption. In the vast majority of these systems, the coupling between the system and the outside world (which leads to loss) is well described as “Markovian,” meaning that the outside world has no memory of its past state. In this work, we introduce a class of driven-dissipative systems in which a nonlinear cavity experiences non-Markovian coupling to the outside world. In the classical regime, we show that these non-Markovian cavities can have extremely low thresholds for nonlinear effects, as well as self-pulsing instabilities at THz rates, and rich phase diagrams with alternating regions of stability and instability. In the quantum regime, we show how these systems, when implemented on state-of-the-art platforms, can enable generation of strongly squeezed cavity states with intensity fluctuations that can be more than 15 dB below the classical limit, in contrast to the Markovian driven-dissipative cavity, in which the limit is 3 dB. In the regime of few-photon nonlinearity, such non-Markovian cavities can enable a deterministic protocol to generate Fock states of high order, which are long-desired, but still elusive at optical frequencies. We expect that exploiting non-Markovian couplings in nonlinear optics should in the future lead to even richer possibilities than those discussed here for both classical and quantum light manipulations.