Mesoscopic Limit Cycles in Coupled Nanolasers
Résumé
Two coupled semiconductor nanolasers exhibit a mode switching transition, theoretically characterized by limit cycle-or mode-beating-oscillations. Their decay rate is vanishingly small in the thermodynamic limit, i.e. when the spontaneous emission noise β-factor tends to zero. We provide experimental evidence of mesoscopic limit cycles-with ∼ 10 3 intracavity photons-through photon statistics measurements. We first show that the order parameter quantifying the limit cycle amplitude can be reconstructed from the mode intensity statistics. As a main result we observe a maximum of the averaged amplitude at the mode switching, accounting for limit cycle oscillations. We finally relate this maximum to a dip of mode cross-correlations, reaching a minimum of g (2) ij = 2/3, which we show to be a mesoscopic limit. Coupled nanolasers are thus an appealing testbed for the investigation of spontaneous breaking of time-translation symmetry in presence of strong quantum fluctuations.
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