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Signatures of a dissipative phase transition in photon correlation measurements

Nature Physics volume 14, pages 365–369 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Understanding and characterizing phase transitions in driven-dissipative systems constitutes a new frontier for many-body physics1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8. A generic feature of dissipative phase transitions is a vanishing gap in the Liouvillian spectrum9, 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 polaritons10,11, which can be described as a first-order dissipative phase transition12,13,14. 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.

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Fig. 1: Experimental set-up and cavity transmission spectrum.
Fig. 2: Dynamical bistability in cavity transmission.
Fig. 3: Non-equilibrium dynamics in the strong fluctuation regime.
Fig. 4: Liouvillian gap scaling with drive strength.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank A. Reinhard, T. Volz and J. Reichel for early work that led to the development of the semiconductor fibre cavity structure used in this work. We also acknowledge fruitful discussions with C. Ciuti and S. Zeytinoğlu. 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 Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft within the Project Schn1376/3–1.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland

    Thomas Fink & Ataç Imamoglu

  2. Technische Physik, Universität Würzbug, Würzburg, Germany

    Anne Schade, Sven Höfling & Christian Schneider

  3. SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, UK

    Sven Höfling

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Contributions

T.F. and A.I. designed and supervised the experiment. T.F. carried out the measurements. A.S., S.H., and C.S. grew the sample. T.F. and A.I. wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Thomas Fink.

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Fink, T., Schade, A., Höfling, S. et al. Signatures of a dissipative phase transition in photon correlation measurements. Nature Phys 14, 365–369 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-017-0020-9

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