Emergent Quasiperiodicity from Polariton-phonon Hybrid Excitations in Waveguide Quantum Optomechanics

TL;DR

This paper explores how hybrid polariton-phonon excitations in a waveguide quantum optomechanical system lead to emergent quasiperiodic structures, affecting excitation properties and enabling new topological phenomena.

Contribution

It introduces the concept of interaction-induced quasiperiodicity in polariton-phonon systems and analyzes its effects on excitation behavior and topological states.

Findings

Quasiperiodic structures emerge from phonon scatterings and long-range couplings.

Topological edge states appear in the subradiant regime.

Transitions between ergodic and multifractal excitations are observed.

Abstract

We investigate polariton-phonon hybrid excitations, which describe the collective excitations of emitter-photon polaritons and vibrational phonons, in a periodic array of vibrating two-level emitters interacting with waveguide photons. We demonstrate the emergence of an interaction-induced quasiperiodic structure caused by the interplay between phonon scatterings and waveguide-mediated long-range couplings. This quasiperiodicity fundamentally changes the excitation characteristics in the subradiant regime, which feature an appearance of topological edge states and a transition between ergodic and multifractal excitations. A possible realization consisting of an array of laser-cooled atoms trapped near an optical nanofiber is also proposed. Our results demonstrate the possibility of utilizing vibrations as a novel degree of freedom in the exploration of many-body physics with waveguide quantum electrodynamics systems.