Photonic lattice simulation of dissipation-induced correlations in bosonic systems

Abstract: We propose an optical simulation of dissipation-induced correlations in one-dimensional (1D) interacting bosonic systems, using a two-dimensional (2D) array of linear photonic waveguides and only classical light. We show that for the case of two bosons in a 1D lattice, one can simulate on-site two-body dissipative dynamics using a linear 2D waveguide array with lossy diagonal waveguides. The intensity distribution of the propagating light directly maps out the wave function, allowing one to observe the dissipation-induced correlations with simple measurements. Beyond the on-site model, we also show that a generalised model containing nearest-neighbour dissipative interaction can be engineered and probed in the proposed set-up.