Synchronization-induced flat bands in driven-dissipative dimer-waveguide chains

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how synchronization control in a driven-dissipative dimer-waveguide chain can induce and manipulate flat bands, enabling selective excitation of localized modes in optical systems.

Contribution

It introduces a method to control flat band properties via synchronization regimes, revealing a pump-induced phase transition in a driven-dissipative optical lattice.

Findings

In-phase regime yields a damped, subdominant flat band.

Antiphase regime produces a dominant, neutrally stable flat band.

Switching regimes enables selective flat-band population and phase transition.

Abstract

Flat bands in driven-dissipative systems offer a route to engineer strongly localized, long-lived excitations, yet their selective population via incoherent pumping remains an open challenge. We study a one-dimensional chain of coupled lasing dimers arranged in a cross-stitch geometry and show that the synchronization regime of the individual dimers, controllable through pump intensity or inter-resonator distance, determines the character of the flat band hosted by the chain. In the in-phase (ferromagnetic) regime, the flat band appears as a subdominant, damped mode in the linear excitation spectrum. In the antiphase (antiferromagnetic) regime, by contrast, the dimers decouple and the flat band becomes the dominant, neutrally stable mode: it corresponds to an infinite family of Goldstone modes arising from the independent phase rotations of non-interacting dimers, and its compact localized states are directly observable in the noise response spectrum. Switching between these two regimes via pump control constitutes a pump-induced phase transition of the lasing lattice. Our results establish synchronization engineering as a practical mechanism for selective flat-band population in driven-dissipative optical systems, and open new avenues for studying flat-band physics, including nonlinear effects, Fano resonances, and excitation coherence in experimentally accessible laser and polariton platforms.