Nonreciprocity in three optical modes with non-Markovian effects
Phys. Rev. A 114, 023726 – Published 25 August, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/6z2x-n7dj
Abstract
In this work, we construct a coupled cavity system consisting of three optical modes to obtain an effective Hamiltonian mediated by coherent and dissipative couplings via adiabatic elimination of a large dissipation mode. We investigate the interference of coherent and dissipative photon-photon couplings in this system, which leads to the nonreciprocity of electromagnetic wave propagation under the zero-damping condition (ZDC). We study the influences of the parameters on the nonreciprocal transmission to capture the generic physics of the interference between coherent and dissipative couplings. Moreover, we extend the study of nonreciprocal transmission with the Markovian approximation to the non-Markovian environments consisting of a collection of oscillators (bosonic photonic modes) and develop the adiabatic elimination method with non-Markovian effects. We illustrate that nonreciprocal transmission at ZDCs exhibits a crossover from the non-Markovian to the Markovian regimes by controlling the environmental spectral widths. This indicates a promising way to enhance or steer quantum nonreciprocal devices in optical cavities and provides potential applications for optical communications with non-Markovian effects.
