Photonic Loschmidt echo in binary waveguide lattices

Abstract

Time reversal is one of the most intriguing yet elusive wave phenomenon of major interest in different areas of classical and quantum physics. Time reversal requires in principle to flip the sign of the Hamiltonian of the system, leading to a revival of the initial state (Loschmidt echo). Here it is shown that Loschmidt echo of photons can be observed in an optical setting without resorting to reversal of the Hamiltonian. We consider photonic propagation in a binary waveguide lattice and show that, by exchanging the two sublattices after some propagation distance, a Loschmidt echo can be observed. Examples of Loschmidt echoes for single photon and NOON states are given in one- and two-dimensional waveguide lattices.

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References in corpus (7)

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• Dynamics of Loschmidt echoes and fidelity decay
• Decoherence, Entanglement and Irreversibility in Quantum Dynamical Systems with Few Degrees of Freedom
• Fractional Bloch oscillations in photonic lattices
• Observation of discrete gap solitons in binary waveguide arrays
• Time reversal symmetry in optics
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