2025/01/06 by Junhyeon Bae, Bae, Junhyeon, Kyungmin Lee +5 · 4 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Optics (physics.optics) #Other Condensed Matter (cond-mat.other) #Photonic Crystals and Applications #Photonic and Optical Devices #Quantum Physics (quant-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2501.03106
openalex publication_date 2025/01/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Photonic temporal crystals host a variety of intriguing phenomena, from wave amplification and mixing to exotic band structures, all stemming from the time-periodic modulation of optical properties. While these features have been well described classically, their quantum manifestation has remained elusive. Here, we introduce a quantum electrodynamical model of PTCs that reveals a deeper connection between classical and quantum pictures: the classical momentum gap arises from a localization-delocalization quantum phase transition in a Floquet-photonic synthetic lattice. Leveraging an effective Hamiltonian perspective, we pinpoint the critical momenta and highlight how classical exponential field growth manifests itself as wave-packet acceleration in the quantum synthetic space. Remarkably, when a two-level atom is embedded in such a cavity, its Rabi oscillations undergo irreversible decay to a half-and-half mixed state-a previously unobserved phenomenon driven by photonic delocalization within the momentum gap, even with just a single frequency mode. Our findings establish photonic temporal crystals as versatile platforms for studying nonequilibrium quantum photonics and suggest new avenues for controlling light matter interactions through time domain engineering.