3D micro-printing: An enabling technique for arbitrary potential landscapes for photonic quantum-gases

TL;DR

This paper introduces 3D micro-printing technology to create advanced potential landscapes for photonic quantum gases, enabling new experimental studies of open quantum systems and complex ground-state problems.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel 3D micro-printing method that significantly improves the size, definition, and complexity of potential landscapes for photonic quantum gases.

Findings

Created diverse potential landscapes including box, harmonic, double-well, and topological lattices.

Demonstrated potential sizes and depths surpassing previous methods by at least an order of magnitude.

Enabled experimental exploration of open quantum system physics and complex models like the XY-model.

Abstract

Photonic quantum gases explore the physics of open driven-dissipative quantum systems under ambient conditions and thus open access to thermodynamics and transport phenomena in quantum gases in the weakly interacting regime. Here we introduce the technology of 3D micro-printing to create potential landscapes for photonic quantum gases in dye-filled micro cavities, which surpass the current state of the art in terms of potential size and definition, potential depth, coupling strength, and number of coupled potentials by at least an order of magnitude. We realize as demonstration of the capabilities box potentials with rectangular side walls, anisotropic harmonic potentials, double-well potentials with dimensions on the scale of the wavelength of light as well as potential lattices with topological non-trivial properties. This approach paves the way for experimentally studying the physics of open quantum systems on lattices and might find applications in solving complex ground-state problems like the XY-model.