Repulsively induced photon super-bunching in driven resonator arrays

TL;DR

This paper investigates how driven nonlinear photonic resonator arrays can exhibit photon super-bunching due to repulsive interactions, revealing counter-intuitive quantum statistical effects in non-equilibrium conditions.

Contribution

It demonstrates super-bunching in photon emission from driven resonator arrays with strong onsite repulsion, supported by analytical and experimental considerations.

Findings

Super-bunching occurs despite strong repulsive interactions.

The effect is observable in Bose-Hubbard and Jaynes-Cummings models.

Analytical explanation provided for two-resonator systems.

Abstract

We analyze the non-equilibrium behaviour of driven nonlinear photonic resonator arrays under the selective excitation of specific photonic many-body modes. Targeting the unit-filled ground state, we find a counter-intuitive `super bunching' in the emitted photon statistics in spite of relatively strong onsite repulsive interaction. We consider resonator arrays with Kerr nonlinearities described by the Bose Hubbard model, but also show that an analogous effect is observable in near-future experiments coupling resonators to two-level systems as described by the Jaynes Cummings Hubbard Hamiltonian. For the experimentally accessible case of a pair of coupled resonators forming a photonic molecule, we provide an analytical explanation for the nature of the effect.