Unconventional saturation effects at intermediate drive in a lossy cavity coupled to few emitters

TL;DR

This paper uncovers a nonlinear cavity response at intermediate drive levels in lossy cavity-emitter systems, driven by destructive interference and large cooperativity, with implications for quantum state engineering and system characterization.

Contribution

It reveals a novel saturation effect in the Tavis-Cummings model that occurs without strong coupling, expanding the understanding of nonlinear phenomena in dissipative quantum systems.

Findings

Large cooperativity enables nonlinear effects without strong coupling.

$(N+1)$-photon processes dominate at intermediate drive levels.

Analytical expression for critical drive strength derived.

Abstract

Recent technological advancements have enabled strong light-matter interaction in highly dissipative cavity-emitter systems. However, in these systems, which are well described by the Tavis-Cummings model, the considerable loss rates render the realization of many desirable nonlinear effects, such as saturation and photon blockade, problematic. Here we present another effect occurring within the Tavis-Cummings model: a nonlinear response of the cavity for resonant external driving of intermediate strength, which makes use of large cavity dissipation rates. In this regime, $(N+1)$-photon processes dominate when the cavity couples to $N$ emitters. We explore and characterize this effect in detail, and provide a picture of how the effect occurs due to destructive interference between the emitter ensemble and the external drive. We find that a central condition for the observed effect is large cooperativity, i.e., the product of the cavity and emitter decay rates is much smaller than the collective cavity-emitter interaction strength squared. Importantly, this condition does not require strong coupling. We also find an analytical expression for the critical drive strength at which the effect appears. Our results have potential for quantum state engineering, e.g., photon filtering, and could be used for the characterization of cavity-emitter systems where the number of emitters is unknown. In particular, our results open the way for investigations of unique quantum-optics applications in a variety of platforms that neither require high-quality cavities nor strong coupling.