The role of geometry in the superfluid flow of nonlocal photon fluids
arXiv:1511.06634 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevA.94.013849
Abstract
Recent work has unveiled a new class of optical systems that can exhibit the characteristic features of superfluidity. One such system relies on the repulsive photon-photon interaction that is mediated by a thermal optical nonlinearity and is therefore inherently nonlocal due to thermal diffusion. Here we investigate how such a nonlocal interaction, which at a first inspection would not be expected to lead to superfluid behavior, may be tailored by acting upon the geometry of the photon fluid itself. Our models and measurements show that restricting the laser profile and hence the photon fluid to a strongly elliptical geometry modifies thermal diffusion along the major beam axis and reduces the effective nonlocal interaction length by two orders of magnitude. This in turn enables the system to display a characteristic trait of superfluid flow: the nucleation of quantized vortices in the flow past an extended physical obstacle. These results are general and apply to other nonlocal fluids, such as dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, and show that "thermal" photon superfluids provide an exciting and novel experimental environment for probing the nature of superfluidity, with applications to the study of quantum turbulence and analogue gravity.
References in corpus (28)
- Quantum fluids of light
- Vortices in a Bose-Einstein Condensate
- The physics of dipolar bosonic quantum gases
- Observation of Superfluidity of Polaritons in Semiconductor Microcavities
- Roton-maxon spectrum and stability of trapped dipolar condensates
- Polariton superfluids reveal quantum hydrodynamic solitons
- Dispersive, superfluid-like shock waves in nonlinear optics
- Introduction to quantum turbulence
- Observation of vortex phase singularities in Bose-Einstein condensates
- Shocks in nonlocal media
- The laminar-turbulent transition in a fibre laser
- All-optical control of the quantum flow of a polariton superfluid
- Velocity Statistics Distinguish Quantum Turbulence from Classical Turbulence
- Manifestations of the Roton Mode in Dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensates
- Observation of a gradient catastrophe generating solitons
- Bogoliubov dispersion relation and the possibility of superfluidity for weakly-interacting photons in a 2D photon fluid
- Vortices and turbulence in trapped atomic condensates
- Superfluid light in propagating geometries
- Acoustic black holes in a two-dimensional "photon-fluid"
- Classical and quantum regimes of two-dimensional turbulence in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates
- Propagation of a quantum fluid of light in a cavityless nonlinear optical medium: General theory and response to quantum quenches
- In situ imaging of vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates
- Suppression of transverse instabilities of dark solitons and their dispersive shock waves
- Dynamics of fluctuations in an optical analog of the Laval nozzle
- Measurement of scaling laws for shock waves in thermal nonlocal media
- Bose-Einstein condensation of photons with nonlocal nonlinearity in a dye-doped graded-index microcavity
- Regularization of fluctuations near the sonic horizon due to the quantum potential and its influence on the Hawking radiation
- Nonlocality and fluctuations near the optical analog of a sonic horizon
Cited by in corpus (35)
- Observation of the Bogoliubov dispersion relation in a fluid of light
- Dispersive dam-break flow of a photon fluid
- Dramatic acceleration of wave condensation mediated by disorder in multimode fibers
- Hot atomic vapors for nonlinear and quantum optics
- Wave condensation with weak disorder versus beam self-cleaning in multimode fibers
- Superradiant scattering in fluids of light
- Wave breaking and formation of dispersive shock waves in a defocusing nonlinear optical material
- Interferences between Bogoliubov excitations and their impact on the evidence of superfluidity in a paraxial fluid of light
- Penrose Superradiance in Nonlinear Optics
- Acoustic black-hole bombs and scalar clouds in a photon-fluid model
- Experimental observation of turbulent coherent structures in a superfluid of light
- Thermo-optical interactions in a dye-microcavity photon Bose-Einstein condensate
- Observation of photon droplets and their dynamics
- Short Bragg pulse spectroscopy for a paraxial fluids of light
- Flying in a superfluid: starting flow past an airfoil
- Massive phonons and gravitational dynamics in a photon-fluid model
- Vortex creation, annihilation and nonlinear dynamics in atomic vapors
- Synthetic magnetism for photon fluids
- Superfluidity of a laser-stirred Bose-Einstein condensate
- Pump-and-probe optical transmission phase shift as a quantitative probe of the Bogoliubov dispersion relation in a nonlinear channel waveguide
- Dissipation-enhanced collapse singularity of a nonlocal fluid of light in a hot atomic vapor
- Spin-orbit-coupled fluids of light in bulk nonlinear media
- Topological constraints on the dynamics of vortex formation in a two-dimensional quantum fluid
- Self-bound droplets of light with orbital angular momentum
- Critical velocity of a two-dimensional superflow past a potential barrier of arbitrary penetrability
- Incoherent localized structures and hidden coherent solitons from the gravitational instability of the Schrödinger-Poisson equation
- Critical velocity for superfluidity in the one-dimensional mean-field regime: From matter to light quantum fluids
- Paraxial fluids of light
- Measurement of nonequilibrium vortex propagation dynamics in a nonlinear medium
- Measurement of the inner horizon in the analog of rotating BTZ black holes by an improved photon fluid
- Bound Bogoliubov quasiparticles in photon superfluids
- Steady-state superfluidity of light in a tunable cavity at room temperature
- Stationary transport above the critical velocity in a one-dimensional superflow past an obstacle
- Paraxial fluid of light in hot atomic vapors
- Critical speed of a binary superfluid of light