title: Incompressible Polaritons in a Flat Band.
abstract: We study the interplay of geometric frustration and interactions in a nonequilibrium photonic lattice system exhibiting a polariton flat band as described by a variant of the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model. We show how to engineer strong photonic correlations in such a driven, dissipative system by quenching the kinetic energy through frustration. This produces an incompressible state of photons characterized by short-ranged crystalline order with period doubling. The latter manifests itself in strong spatial correlations, i.e., on-site and nearest-neighbor antibunching combined with extended density-wave oscillations at larger distances. We propose a state-of-the-art circuit QED realization of our system, which is tunable in situ.
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Matteo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Biondi
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Evert P L
authors.initials: EP
authors.lastname: van Nieuwenburg
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Gianni
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Blatter
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sebastian D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Huber
authors.affiliation: Institute for Theoretical Physics, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Sebastian
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schmidt