2011/10/27 by Alois Regensburger, Christoph Bersch, Benjamin Hinrichs +4 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.233902
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 233902 (2011) · To appear in PRL
arxiv created 2011/10/27 · arxiv updated 2011/12/06
We study light propagation in a photonic system that shows stepwise evolution in a discretized environment. It resembles a discrete-time version of photonic waveguide arrays or quantum walks. By introducing controlled photon losses to our experimental setup, we observe unexpected effects like sub-exponential energy decay and formation of complex fractal patterns. This demonstrates that the interplay of linear losses, discreteness and energy gradients leads to genuinely new coherent phenomena in classical and quantum optical experiments. Moreover, the influence of decoherence is investigated.