Steady-state localized-delocalized phase transition of an incoherent-pumped dissipative Bose-Hubbard model

TL;DR

This paper explores a two-dimensional incoherent-pumped dissipative Bose-Hubbard model, revealing a novel steady-state phase transition between localized and delocalized phases driven by environment-induced fluctuations and photon interactions.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of environment-induced higher-order fluctuations causing a phase transition in a driven-dissipative photon lattice, highlighting a new mechanism for controlling many-body dynamics.

Findings

Discovery of a steady-state localized-delocalized phase transition.

Identification of an anti-blockade effect where increased photon interaction promotes phase transition.

Analysis of single-cavity properties explains the many-body phenomena.

Abstract

We investigate steady-state properties of a two-dimensional incoherent-pumped dissipative Bose-Hubbard model, which describes a photon square lattice. This incoherent pumping exhibits an important environment-induced higher-order fluctuation effect, which induces a strong competition between the driven-dissipative channel, the photon-photon interaction, and the photon hopping in multi-photon processes. This new competition gives rise to a spontaneous breaking of the U(1) symmetry of system. As a result, we predict a many-body steady-state localized-delocalized phase transition and an anti-blockade effect, in which the increasing of the repulsive photon-photon interaction promotes the emergence of phase transition. These unconventional many-body steady-state phenomena can be understood by analyzing the single-cavity properties. Our results pave a new way to control many-body dynamics of driven-dissipative systems.