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Signatures of the superfluid-insulator phase transition in laser-driven dissipative nonlinear cavity arrays

Tue, 2011-02-22 18:32 - Daniel Rudolph
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Date: 
2010-06-11
Author(s): 

A. Tomadin, V. Giovannetti, R. Fazio, D. Gerace, I. Carusotto, H.E. Tureci, A. Imamoglu

Reference: 

Phys. Rev. A 81, 061801(R) (2010)

URL: 

http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevA.81.061801

We analyze the nonequilibrium dynamics of a gas of interacting photons in an array of coupled dissipative nonlinear cavities when driven by a pulsed external coherent field. Using a mean-field approach, we show that the response of the system is strongly sensitive to the underlying (equilibrium) quantum phase transition from a Mott insulator to a superfluid state at commensurate filling. We find that the coherence of the cavity emission after a quantum quench can be used to determine the phase diagram of an optical many-body system even in the presence of dissipation.