Supersymmetry in quantum optics and in spin-orbit coupled systems.

ABSTRACT: Light-matter interaction is naturally described by coupled bosonic and fermionic subsystems. This suggests that a certain Bose-Fermi duality is naturally present in the fundamental quantum mechanical description of photons interacting with atoms. We reveal submanifolds in parameter space of a basic light-matter interacting system where this duality is promoted to a supersymmetry (SUSY) which remains unbroken. We show that SUSY is robust with respect to decoherence and dissipation. In particular, the stationary density matrix at the supersymmetric lines in parameter space has a degenerate subspace. The dimension of this subspace is given by the Witten index and thus is topologically protected. As a consequence, the dissipative dynamics is constrained by a robust additional conserved quantit

SUBMITTER: Tomka M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4541257 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature