2017/12/31 by Sebabrata Mukherjee, Harikumar K. Chandrasekharan, Patrik Öhberg +2 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #physics.optics #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-018-06723-y
published as Nature Communications 9, 4209 (2018) · Comments are welcome
arxiv created 2018/07/13 · arxiv updated 2018/10/15
Photonic lattices - arrays of optical waveguides - are powerful platforms for simulating a range of phenomena, including topological phases. While probing dynamics is possible in these systems, by reinterpreting the propagation direction as "time," accessing long timescales constitutes a severe experimental challenge. Here, we overcome this limitation by placing the photonic lattice in a cavity, which allows the optical state to evolve through the lattice multiple times. The accompanying detection method, which exploits a multi-pixel single-photon detector array, offers quasi-real time-resolved measurements after each round trip. We apply the state-recycling scheme to intriguing photonic lattices emulating Dirac fermions and Floquet topological phases. In this new platform, we also realise a synthetic pulsed electric field, which can be used to drive transport within photonic lattices. This work opens a new route towards the detection of long timescale effects in engineered photonic lattices and the realization of hybrid analogue-digital simulators.