Quantum dissipative adaptation with cascaded photons

Abstract

Classical dissipative adaptation is a hypothetical non-equilibrium thermodynamic principle of self-organization in driven matter, relating transition probabilities with the non-equilibrium work performed by an external drive on dissipative matter. Recently, the dissipative adaptation hypothesis was extended to a quantum regime, with a theoretical model where only one single-photon pulse drives each atom of an ensemble. Here, we further generalize that quantum model by analytically showing that N cascaded single-photon pulses driving each atom still fulfills a quantum dissipative adaptation. Interestingly, we find that the level of self-organization achieved with two pulses can be matched with a single effective pulse only up to a threshold, above which the presence of more photons provide unparalleled degrees of self-organization.