Observation of a Dissipation-Induced Classical to Quantum Transition

James Raftery, Darius Sadri, Sebastian Schmidt, Hakan E. Türeci, Andrew A. Houck

Published 2013-12-10, updated 2014-07-29Version 2

We report here the experimental observation of a dynamical quantum phase transition in a strongly interacting open photonic system. The system studied, comprising a Jaynes-Cummings dimer realized on a superconducting circuit platform, exhibits a dissipation driven localization transition. Signatures of the transition in the homodyne signal and photon number reveal this transition to be from a regime of classical oscillations into a macroscopically self-trapped state manifesting revivals, a fundamentally quantum phenomenon. This experiment also demonstrates a small-scale realization of a new class of quantum simulator, whose well controlled coherent and dissipative dynamics is suited to the study of quantum many-body phenomena out of equilibrium.