Nonconventional thermal states of interacting bosonic oligomers

Abstract

There has recently been a growing effort to understand the physics and intricate dynamics of many-body andmany-state (multimode) interacting bosonic systems in a comprehensive manner. For instance, in photonics, non-linear multimode fibers are being intensely investigated nowadays due to their promise for ultrahigh-bandwidthand high-power capabilities. Similar prospects are being pursued in connection with magnon Bose-Einstein(BE) condensates, and ultracold atoms in periodic lattices for room-temperature quantum devices and quantumcomputation, respectively. While it is practically impossible to monitor the phase space of such complexsystems (classically or quantum mechanically), thermodynamics has succeeded in predicting their thermal state:the Rayleigh-Jeans (RJ) distribution for classical fields and the BE distribution for quantum systems. Thesedistributions are monotonic and promote either the ground state or the most excited mode. Here, we demonstratethe possibility to advance the participation of other modes in the thermal state of bosonic oligomers. The resultingnonmonotonic modal occupancies are described by a microcanonical treatment, while they deviate drasticallyfrom the RJ/BE predictions of canonical and grand-canonical ensembles. Our results provide a paradigm ofensemble equivalence violation and can be used for designing the shape of thermal states.