Critical fluctuations in an optical parametric oscillator: when light behaves like magnetism

Abstract

We study the nondegenerate optical parametric oscillator in a planar interferometer near threshold, where critical phenomena are expected. These phenomena are associated with nonequilibrium quantum dynamics that are known to lead to quadrature entanglement and squeezing in the oscillator field modes. We obtain a universal form for the equation describing this system, which allows a comparison with other phase transitions. We find that the unsqueezed quadratures of this system correspond to a two-dimensional XY-type model with a tricritical Lifshitz point. This leaves open the possibility of a controlled experimental investigation into this unusual class of statistical models. We evaluate the correlations of the unsqueezed quadrature using both an exact numerical simulation and a Gaussian approximation, and obtain an accurate numerical calculation of the non-Gaussian correlations.

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References in corpus (4)

• Quantum fluids of light
• An introduction to the Ginzburg-Landau theory of phase transitions and nonequilibrium patterns
• Experimental demonstration of frequency-degenerate bright EPR beams with a self-phase-locked optical parametric oscillator
• Isotropic Lifshitz critical behavior from the functional renormalization group

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Non-equilibrium fixed points of coupled Ising models
• Non-equilibrium phase transitions in coupled nonlinear optical resonators
• On the nature of the non-equilibrium phase transition in the non-Markovian driven Dicke model
• Classical and quantum theory of magnonic and magnetoelastic nonlinear dynamics in continuum geometries