In-situ Coherence Tuning of a Network of Photon BECs

Photon Bose-Einstein condensates (pBECs) are a platform of interest for both the study of fundamental phenomena in many-body physics and the implementation of next-generation analog simulators for solving optimization problems.
In our physical system, the network of coupled pBECs in a microcavity setup is created by individually laser-pumping trap sites that are formed by permanent nanostructuring and connected via waveguides to their nearest neighbours.

Due to the roughness and non-flat landscape of the microcavity mirrors, trap sites are excited at different frequencies, making the relative phases undefined. This is crucial for finding the ground state of a network of pBECs - a problem that is NP-complete, which makes this platform a promising candidate for analog optimization problem solver.

We propose an approach for in-situ coherence tuning using a permanent nanostructuring technique with active feedback on excited trap site frequencies and report our preliminary results on the creation of an uncoupled coherent network of pBECs using this approach.