Spontaneous mirror-symmetry breaking in a photonic molecule

Abstract

Multi-cavity photonic systems, known as photonic molecules (PMs), are ideal multi-well potential building blocks for advanced quantum and nonlinear optics. A key phenomenon arising in double well potentials is the spontaneous breaking of the inversion symmetry, i.e. a transition from a delocalized to two localized states in the wells, which are mirror images of each other. Although few theoretical studies have addressed mirror-symmetry breaking in micro and nanophotonic systems, no experimental evidence has been reported to date. Thanks to the potential barrier engineering implemented here, we demonstrate spontaneous mirror-symmetry breaking through a pitchfork bifurcation in a PM composed of two coupled photonic crystal nanolasers. Coexistence of localized states is shown by switching them with short pulses. This offers exciting prospects for the realization of ultra-compact, integrated, scalable optical flip-flops based on spontaneous symmetry breaking. Furthermore, we predict such transitions with few intracavity photons for future devices with strong quantum correlations.

References in corpus (3)

• Single photons from coupled quantum modes
• The `Higgs' Amplitude Mode at the Two-Dimensional Superfluid-Mott Insulator Transition
• The quantum optical Josephson interferometer

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• Symmetry breaking of quantum droplets in a dual-core trap
• Symmetry breaking in laser cavities
• Two coupled nonlinear cavities in a driven-dissipative environment
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking of fundamental states, vortices, and dipoles in two- and one-dimensional linearly coupled traps with cubic self-attraction
• Spontaneous symmetry breaking in a split potential box
• Coherent Cerenkov radiation and laser oscillation in a photonic crystal
• Experimental study of speckle patterns generated by low-coherence semiconductor laser light
• Mapping repulsive to attractive interaction in driven-dissipative quantum systems
• Quench dynamics in strongly coupled laser cavities
• Symmetry breaking in a two-component system with repulsive interactions and linear coupling