Optimized multifrequency light collection by adaptive self-ordering of scatterers in optical resonators

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how particles in optical resonators self-organize into patterns that optimize light collection, adapting dynamically to changing conditions and retaining memory of past configurations, with broad applicability.

Contribution

It introduces a generalized self-ordering mechanism for particles in multimode optical cavities that enhances light collection and adapts to varying input conditions.

Findings

Particles form ordered patterns maximizing cavity light collection.

System retains memory, enabling faster re-optimization.

Adaptive dynamics observed in noisy environments.

Abstract

Mobile light scatterers in a high-Q optical cavity transversely illuminated by laser light close to a cavity resonance form ordered patterns, which maximize light scattering into the cavity and induce optical self-trapping. We show that a generalized form of such crystallization dynamics appears in multicolored pump fields with several cavity modes. Here the particles arrange in spatial patterns maximizing total light collection into the resonator. For changing input frequencies and strengths the particles dynamically adapt to the current illumination. Interestingly the system keeps some memory on past configurations, so that a later renewed application of the same pattern exhibits faster adaptation towards optimal collective scattering. In a noisy environment particles explore larger regions of configuration space spending most of the time close to optimum scattering configurations. This adaptive self-ordering dynamics should be implementable in a wide range of systems ranging from cold atoms in multimode cavities or nano-fiber traps to molecules or mobile nano-particles within an optical resonator.