Dissipative Pairing Interactions: Quantum Instabilities, Topological Light, and Volume-Law Entanglement

TL;DR

This paper explores how dissipative pairing interactions can induce quantum instabilities and topological light phenomena, enabling selective entanglement of edge modes in bosonic lattices with practical experimental setups.

Contribution

It introduces a novel class of dissipative pairing interactions that generate instabilities and topological effects while maintaining pure steady states until instability thresholds.

Findings

Dissipative pairing interactions can induce instabilities in bosonic systems.

Pure steady states are maintained up to the instability threshold.

Edge modes can be selectively populated and entangled using this method.

Abstract

We analyze an unusual class of bosonic dynamical instabilities that arise from dissipative (or non-Hermitian) pairing interactions. We show that, surprisingly, a completely stable dissipative pairing interaction can be combined with simple hopping or beam-splitter interactions (also stable) to generate instabilities. Further, we find that the dissipative steady state in such a situation remains completely pure up until the instability threshold (in clear distinction from standard parametric instabilities). These pairing-induced instabilities also exhibit an extremely pronounced sensitivity to wavefunction localization. This provides a simple yet powerful method for selectively populating and entangling edge modes of photonic (or more general bosonic) lattices having a topological bandstructure. The underlying dissipative pairing interaction is experimentally resource-friendly, requiring the addition of a single additional localized interaction to an existing lattice, and is compatible with a number of existing platforms, including superconducting circuits.