No Arabic abstract
We study coherent backscattering of a quasi-monochromatic laser by a dilute gas of cold two-level atoms. We consider the perturbative regime of weak intensities, where nonlinear effects arise from {em inelastic} two-photon scattering processes. Here, coherent backscattering can be formed by interference between {em three} different scattering amplitudes. Consequently, if elastically scattered photons are filtered out from the photodetection signal by means of suitable frequency-selective detection, we find the nonlinear backscattering enhancement factor to exceed the linear barrier two.
Light propagating in an optically thick sample experiences multiple scattering. It is now known that interferences alter this propagation, leading to an enhanced backscattering, a manifestation of weak localization of light in such diffuse samples. This phenomenon has been extensively studied with classical scatterers. In this letter we report the first experimental evidence for coherent backscattering of light in a laser-cooled gas of Rubidium atoms.
We study phase transitions in a lattice of square-arranged driven-dissipative polariton condensates with nearest-neighbour coupling. Simulating the polarization (spin) dynamics of the polariton lattice, we observe regions of qualitatively different steady-state behaviour which can be identified in time-integrated measurements. The transition between these regions resemble phase transitions ubiquitous in statistical physics, but have inherently non-equilibrium nature and cannot be classified in the conventional way. To overcome this challenge, we use machine learning methods to determine the boundaries separating the regions. We use unsupervised data mining techniques to sketch the regions of phase transition. We then apply learning by confusion, a neural network-based method for learning labels in the dataset, and extract the polaritonic phase diagram. Our work takes a step towards AI-enabled studies of polaritonic systems.
A lattice of locally bistable driven-dissipative cavity polaritons is found theoretically to effectively simulate the Ising model, also enabling an effective transverse field. We benchmark the system performance for spin glass problems, and study the scaling of the ground state energy deviation and success probability as a function of system size. As particular examples we consider NP-hard problems embedded in the Ising model, namely graph partitioning and the knapsack problem. We find that locally bistable polariton networks act as classical simulators for solving optimization problems, which can potentially present an improvement within the exponential complexity class.
We show that, in a many-body system, all particles can be strongly confined to the initially occupied sites for a time that scales as a high power of the ratio of the bandwidth of site energies to the hopping amplitude. Such time-domain formulation is complementary to the formulation of the many-body localization of all stationary states with a large localization length. The long localization lifetime is achieved by constructing a periodic sequence of site energies with a large period in a one-dimensional chain. The scaling of the localization lifetime is independent of the number of particles for a broad range of the coupling strength. The analytical results are confirmed by numerical calculations.
The study of granular crystals, metamaterials that consist of closely packed arrays of particles that interact elastically, is a vibrant area of research that combines ideas from disciplines such as materials science, nonlinear dynamics, and condensed-matter physics. Granular crystals, a type of nonlinear metamaterial, exploit geometrical nonlinearities in their constitutive microstructure to produce properties (such as tunability and energy localization) that are not conventional to engineering materials and linear devices. In this topical review, we focus on recent experimental, computational, and theoretical results on nonlinear coherent structures in granular crystals. Such structures --- which include traveling solitary waves, dispersive shock waves, and discrete breathers --- have fascinating dynamics, including a diversity of both transient features and robust, long-lived patterns that emerge from broad classes of initial data. In our review, we primarily discuss phenomena in one-dimensional crystals, as most research has focused on such scenarios, but we also present some extensions to two-dimensional settings. Throughout the review, we highlight open problems and discuss a variety of potential engineering applications that arise from the rich dynamic response of granular crystals.