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  • Open Access

Stabilizing Open Photon Condensates by Ghost-Attractor Dynamics

Aya Abouelela1,*,†, Michael Turaev1,*,‡, Roman Kramer1, Moritz Janning1, Michael Kajan1, Sayak Ray1,§, and Johann Kroha1,2,∥

  • *These authors contributed equally to this work.
  • †Contact author: ayaaabou@uni-bonn.de
  • ‡Contact author: mturaev@uni-bonn.de
  • §Contact author: sayak@uni-bonn.de
  • ∥Contact author: jkroha@uni-bonn.de
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 053402 – Published 29 July, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/hcsq-dwcg

Abstract

We study the temporal, driven-dissipative dynamics of open photon Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a dye-filled microcavity, taking the condensate amplitude and the noncondensed fluctuations into account on the same footing by means of a cumulant expansion within the Lindblad formalism. The fluctuations fundamentally alter the dynamics in that the BEC always dephases to zero for a sufficiently long time. However, a ghost attractor, although outside of the physically accessible configuration space, attracts the dynamics and leads to a plateaulike stabilization of the BEC for an exponentially long time, consistent with experiments. We also show that the photon BEC and the lasing state are separated by a true phase transition, since they are characterized by different fixed points. The ghost-attractor nonequilibrium stabilization mechanism is an alternative to prethermalization and may possibly be realized on other dynamical platforms as well.

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Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 053402– Published 29 July, 2025
  • Received 25 March 2025
  • Accepted 7 July 2025
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