Signatures of a dissipative phase transition in photon correlation measurements
Date
04/2018Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Understanding and characterizing phase transitions in driven-dissipative systems constitutes a new frontier for many-body physics[1-8]. A generic feature of dissipative phase transitions is a vanishing gap in the Liouvillian spectrum [9], which leads to long-lived deviations from the steady state as the system is driven towards the transition. Here, we show that photon correlation measurements can be used to characterize the corresponding critical slowing down of non-equilibrium dynamics. We focus on the extensively studied phenomenon of optical bistability in GaAs cavity polaritons [10,11], which can be described as a first-order dissipative phase transition [12-14]. Increasing the excitation strength towards the bistable range results in an increasing photon-bunching signal along with a decay time that is prolonged by more than nine orders of magnitude as compared with that of single polaritons. In the limit of strong polariton interactions leading to pronounced quantum fluctuations, the mean-field bistability threshold is washed out. Nevertheless, the functional form with which the Liouvillian gap closes as the thermodynamic limit is approached provides a signature of the emerging dissipative phase transition. Our results establish photon correlation measurements as an invaluable tool for studying dynamical properties of dissipative phase transitions without requiring phase-sensitive interferometric measurements.
Citation
Fink , T , Schade , A , Höfling , S , Schneider , C & Imamoglu , A 2018 , ' Signatures of a dissipative phase transition in photon correlation measurements ' , Nature Physics , vol. 14 , no. 4 , pp. 365-369 . https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-017-0020-9
Publication
Nature Physics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1745-2481Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2017 the Author(s). This work has been made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-017-0020-9
Description
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) through the National Centre of Competence in Research - Quantum Science and Technology (NCCR QSIT). A.S., C.S., and S.H. acknowledge support by the State of Bavaria and the DFG within the Project Schn1376/3-1.Collections
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