Dynamically Generated Synthetic Electric Fields for Photons

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how dynamical synthetic electric fields for photons naturally emerge from nonlinear optomechanical arrays, enabling nonreciprocal photon transport and acting as a photon diode.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent mechanism for generating synthetic electric fields in driven optomechanical systems, expanding the scope of dynamical gauge field applications.

Findings

Synthetic electric fields suppress photon transport.

Direction-dependent photon diode behavior.

Dynamical gauge fields induce nonlinear nonreciprocal transport.

Abstract

Static synthetic magnetic fields give rise to phenomena including the Lorentz force and the quantum Hall effect even for neutral particles, and they have by now been implemented in a variety of physical systems. Moving towards fully dynamical synthetic gauge fields allows, in addition, for backaction of the particles' motion onto the field. If this results in a time-dependent vector potential, conventional electromagnetism predicts the generation of an electric field. Here, we show how synthetic electric fields for photons arise self-consistently due to the nonlinear dynamics in a driven system. Our analysis is based on optomechanical arrays, where dynamical gauge fields arise naturally from phonon-assisted photon tunneling. We study open, one-dimensional arrays, where synthetic magnetic fields are absent. However, we show that synthetic electric fields can be generated dynamically, which, importantly, suppress photon transport in the array. The generation of these fields depends on the direction of photon propagation, leading to a novel mechanism for a photon diode, inducing nonlinear nonreciprocal transport via dynamical synthetic gauge fields.