Universal power law decay in the dynamic hysteresis of an optical cavity with non-instantaneous photon-photon interactions

Abstract: We investigate, experimentally and theoretically, the dynamic optical hysteresis of a coherently driven cavity with non-instantaneous photon-photon interactions. By scanning the frequency detuning between the driving laser and the cavity resonance at different speeds across an optical bistability, we find a hysteresis area that is a non-monotonic function of the scanning speed. As the scanning speed increases and approaches the memory time of the photon-photon interactions, the hysteresis area decays following a power law with exponent -1. The exponent of this power law is independent of the system parameters. To reveal this universal scaling behavior theoretically, we introduce a memory kernel for the interaction term in the standard driven-dissipative Kerr model. Our results offer new perspectives for exploring non-Markovian dynamics of light using arrays of bistable cavities with low quality factors, driven by low laser powers, and at room temperature.