Strongly interacting photons under losses and non-markovian pumping
Abstract
During the last decay, the possibility of generating quantum fluids of light, ie systems in which interactions between photons drive light into a quantum state, has been interesting a fastly growing community. We report here the theoretical study of a quantum optical model consisting of an array of strongly nonlinear cavities. In this system, photons can jump from a cavity to another one by quantum tunnel effect, and interact between each other through the nonlinearity of the optical media. Because of losses by transparency and absorption, it is necessary to inject new photons with an external pumping system. Here we chose the photonic emission to be non-markovian, ie to inject photons inside the system only in a finite band of energy. This interplay between gain and losses drives the system out of thermal equilibrium. In a one cavity configuration, we find by playing with the photonic interaction that it is possible to control the number of photons we want inside the cavity. In a many cavity configuration we find strong signature of a photonic Mott-Insulator phase.