Distinctive class of dissipation-induced phase transitions and their universal characteristics

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Date
2021-05Type
- Journal Article
Citations
Cited 14 times in
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Cited 16 times in
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Abstract
Coupling a system to a nonthermal environment can profoundly affect the phase diagram of the closed system, giving rise to a special class of dissipation-induced phase transitions. Such transitions take the system out of its ground state and stabilize a higher-energy stationary state, rendering it the sole attractor of the dissipative dynamics. In this paper, we present a unifying methodology, which we use to characterize this ubiquitous phenomenology and its implications for the open system dynamics. Specifically, we analyze the closed system's phase diagram, including symmetry-broken phases, and explore their corresponding excitations' spectra. Opening the system, the environment can overwhelm the system's symmetry-breaking tendencies, and changes its order parameter. As a result, isolated distinct phases of similar order become connected, and new phase-costability regions appear. Interestingly, the excitations differ in the newly connected regions through a change in their symplectic norm, which is robust to the introduction of dissipation. As a result, by tuning the system from one phase to the other across the dissipation-stabilized region, the open system fluctuations exhibit an exceptional pointlike scenario, where the fluctuations become overdamped, only to reappear with an opposite sign in the dynamical response function of the system. The overdamped region is also associated with squeezing of the fluctuations. We demonstrate the pervasive nature of such dissipation-induced phenomena in two prominent examples, namely, in parametric resonators and in light-matter systems. Our work draws a crucial distinction between quantum phase transitions and their zero-temperature open system counterparts. Show more
Permanent link
https://doi.org/10.3929/ethz-b-000493719Publication status
publishedExternal links
Journal / series
Physical Review ResearchVolume
Pages / Article No.
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)Organisational unit
09594 - Zilberberg, Oded (ehemalig) / Zilberberg, Oded (former)
03571 - Sigrist, Manfred / Sigrist, Manfred
Funding
190078 - Electronic and photonic quantum engineered systems (SNF)
ETH-45 17-1 - Robust quantum optical communication through strongly nonlinear topological photonics (ETHZ)
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Show all metadata
Citations
Cited 14 times in
Web of Science
Cited 16 times in
Scopus
ETH Bibliography
yes
Altmetrics