Photonic Josephson effect, phase transitions, and chaos in optomechanical systems

TL;DR

This paper explores a photonic analog of the Josephson effect in an optomechanical system, revealing complex dynamics including chaos and phase transitions driven by light pressure-induced nonlinearity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel photonic Josephson system with a mechanical membrane, analyzing its rich dynamical regimes and phase diagram using a mean-field approach.

Findings

Chaos observed in the system dynamics.

Dissipation can induce self-trapping.

Rich phase diagram with multiple regimes.

Abstract

A photonic analog of the Josephson effect is analyzed for a system formed by a partly transparent mechanical membrane dividing an optical cavity into two halves. Photons tunneling between the two sub-cavities constitute the coherent Jospehson current. The force acting upon the membrane due to the light pressure induces a nonlinearity which results in a rich dynamical structure. For example, contrary to standard bosonic Josephson systems, we encounter chaos. By means of a mean-field approach we identify the various regimes and corresponding phase diagram. At the short time scale, chaos is demonstrated to prevent regular self-trapping, while for longer times a dissipation induced self-trapping effect is possible.