Engineering photonic Floquet Hamiltonians through Fabry–Pérot resonators

Abstract

In this paper we analyze an optical Fabry–Pérot resonator as a time-periodic driving of the (2D) optical field repeatedly traversing the resonator, uncovering that resonator twist produces a synthetic magnetic field applied to the light within the resonator, while mirror aberrations produce relativistic dynamics, anharmonic trapping and spacetime curvature. We develop a Floquet formalism to compute the effective Hamiltonian for the 2D field, generalizing the idea that the intra-cavity optical field corresponds to an ensemble of non-interacting, massive, harmonically trapped particles. This work illuminates the extraordinary potential of optical resonators for exploring the physics of quantum fluids in gauge fields and exotic space–times.

Keywords

• optical resonators
• photonic materials
• Floquet dynamics
• synthetic gauge fields
• synthetic spacetime curvature