arXiv · 2503.16695
Stabilizing open photon condensates by ghost-attractor dynamics
Abstract
We study the temporal, driven-dissipative dynamics of open photon Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a dye-filled microcavity, taking the condensate amplitude and the noncondensed fluctuations into account on the same footing by means of a cumulant expansion within the Lindblad formalism. The fluctuations fundamentally alter the dynamics in that the BEC always dephases to zero for sufficiently long time. However, a ghost-attractor, although it is outside of the physically accessible configuration space, attracts the dynamics and leads to a plateau-like stabilization of the BEC for an exponentially long time, consistent with experiments. We also show that the photon BEC and the lasing state are separated by a true phase transition, since they are characterized by different fixed points. The ghost-attractor nonequilibrium stabilization mechanism is alternative to prethermalization and may possibly be realized on other dynamical platforms as well.
Explore related subjects
Keep this discovery
Aya Abouelela, Michael Turaev, Roman Kramer, Moritz Janning, Michael Kajan, Sayak Ray, Johann Kroha. 2025-03-20. Stabilizing open photon condensates by ghost-attractor dynamics. https://doi.org/10.1103/hcsq-dwcg
Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.