Abstract
More than thirty years ago Glauber suggested that the link between the reversible microscopic and the irreversible macroscopic world can be formulated in physical terms through an inverted harmonic oscillator describing quantum amplifiers. Further theoretical studies have shown that the paradigm for irreversibility is indeed the reversed harmonic oscillator. As outlined by Glauber, providing experimental evidence of these idealized physical systems could open the way to a variety of fundamental studies, for example to simulate irreversible quantum dynamics and explain the arrow of time. However, supporting experimental evidence of reversed quantized oscillators is lacking. We report the direct observation of exploding n = 0 and n = 2 discrete states and Γ0 and Γ2 quantized decay rates of a reversed harmonic oscillator generated by an optical photothermal nonlinearity. Our results give experimental validation to the main prediction of irreversible quantum mechanics, that is, the existence of states with quantized decay rates. Our results also provide a novel perspective to optical shock-waves, potentially useful for applications as lasers, optical amplifiers, white-light and X-ray generation.
Highlights
More than thirty years ago Glauber suggested that the link between the reversible microscopic and the irreversible macroscopic world can be formulated in physical terms through an inverted harmonic oscillator describing quantum amplifiers
A simple model that explains exponential dynamics without coupling with the environment has been theoretically discussed by Glauber[7], and is based on the harmonic oscillator (HO) paradigm
We show in the following how a reversed oscillators” (RO) occurs in nonlocal nonlinear optical dynamics, which can be taken as an analog for simulating irreversible quantum mechanics and as a classical system encompassing Gamow vectors (GVs)
Summary
We show in the following how a RO occurs in nonlocal nonlinear optical dynamics, which can be taken as an analog for simulating irreversible quantum mechanics and as a classical system encompassing GVs. The full details of the theoretical analysis can be found in[17]. We start from the paraxial wave equation for the propagation of an optical beam with amplitude A and wavelength λ in a medium with refractive index n0, and negligible linear loss (k = 2πn0/λ)[12]. In (3) Δ n is the nonlocal refractive index perturbation which can be calculated in terms of the material response function R and of the optical intensity |A|2 by a convolution integral (denoted by an asterisk) Δ n = R*|A|2 12. WithThVis(xar)g=um−enP2tγs2hxo2wasndthpat=th−e in∂oxn.linear propagation in a nonlocal defocusing medium leads in a straigthforward way to a model formally equivalent to a RO. In the case of the RO, the GVs profile can be expressed as analytical prolongations in the complex plane of the eigenfunctions of the quantum HO17
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