# Nonequilibrium photonic transport and phase transition in an array of optical cavities

## TL;DR

This paper investigates how photonic transport behaves in a driven array of nonlinear optical cavities, revealing a phase transition from stable to chaotic regimes and a diffusive-insulator transition influenced by disorder and nonlinearity.

## Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of nonequilibrium photonic transport, identifying a threshold-driven transition to chaos and super-diffusive behavior in optical cavity arrays.

## Key findings

- Output field drops sharply beyond a certain chain length threshold.
- Chaotic and unstable regimes emerge after the threshold, indicating super-diffusive transport.
- Disorder and nonlinearity compete, leading to a diffusive-insulator phase transition.

## Abstract

We characterize photonic transport in a boundary driven array of nonlinear optical cavities. We find that the output field suddenly drops when the chain length is increased beyond a threshold. After this threshold a highly chaotic and unstable regime emerges, which marks the onset of a super-diffusive photonic transport. We show the scaling of the threshold with pump intensity and nonlinearity. Finally, we address the competition of disorder and nonlinearity presenting a diffusive-insulator phase transition.