Reservoir engineering and dynamical phase transitions in optomechanical arrays

TL;DR

This paper investigates how driven-dissipative optomechanical arrays can exhibit dynamical phase transitions leading to long-range photonic coherence, with a detailed analysis of a minimal two-membrane system.

Contribution

It introduces a model of driven-dissipative optomechanical arrays showing dynamical phase transitions and long-range coherence, supported by a detailed minimal system analysis.

Findings

Dynamical phase transition to long-range coherence occurs with incoherent driving.

Periodic membrane driving results in photon-number conserving non-unitary dynamics.

A minimal two-membrane system can demonstrate key driven-dissipative phenomena.

Abstract

We study the driven-dissipative dynamics of photons interacting with an array of micromechanical membranes in an optical cavity. Periodic membrane driving and phonon creation result in an effective photon-number conserving non-unitary dynamics, which features a steady state with long-range photonic coherence. If the leakage of photons out of the cavity is counteracted by incoherent driving of the photonic modes, we show that the system undergoes a dynamical phase transition to the state with long-range coherence. A minimal system, composed of two micromechanical membranes in a cavity, is studied in detail, and it is shown to be a realistic setup where the key processes of the driven-dissipative dynamics can be seen.