Fröhlich condensation is a room-temperature nonequilibrium phenomenon which is expected to occur in many physical and biological systems. Although predicted theoretically a half century ago, the nature of such condensation remains elusive. In this Letter, we derive a full quantum theory of Fröhlich condensation from the Wu-Austin Hamiltonian and present an analytical proof that a second-order phase transition induced by nonequilibrium and nonlinearity emerges in the large-$D$ limit with and without decorrelation approximation. This critical behavior cannot be witnessed if external sources are treated classically. We show that the phase transition is accompanied by large fluctuations in the statistical distribution of condensate phonons and that the Mandel-$Q$ factor which characterizes fluctuations becomes negative in the limit of excessive external energy input. In contrast with the cold atom equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), the Fröhlich condensate is a result of the nonequilibrium driving where the pump plays a role of setting the number of particles, and the medium plays a role of setting the temperature. Hence, BEC can either arise by reducing the medium temperature at fixed pump (equilibrium case), or by increasing the pump at fixed medium temperature (nonequilibrium case).

Close

PrevNext

View figure in article

• Continuous phase transition
• Critical phenomena
• Nonequilibrium & irreversible thermodynamics
• Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics
• Phonons
• Protein-solvent interactions
• Quasiparticles & collective excitations
• Molecules
• Single molecule techniques