Polarization-Resolved Photon Statistics of Cavity Quantum Materials
Abstract
By forming hybrid light-matter states, optical cavities offer a route for engineering material properties, however, unambiguously probing the effects of light-matter coupling remains difficult. Here, we show that the polarization-resolved statistics of photons transmitted through a cavity, measurable via g(2), provide one such diagnostic. By relating g(2) to matter correlation functions such as the Raman structure factor, we link photon bunching and antibunching to material properties. By applying this method to the stripy-to-antiferromagnetic transition in the Kitaev-Heisenberg spin model, we find that polarization-dependent patterns of bunching and antibunching encode the magnetic point-group symmetries of each phase and characterize the behavior at the phase boundary. Finally, we predict measuring g(2) for output photon pairs polarized orthogonal to the input field will isolate higher-order light-matter scattering processes that probe higher-order material correlations.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{kass2026polarizationresolved,
title = {{Polarization-Resolved Photon Statistics of Cavity Quantum Materials}},
author = {Benjamin Kass and Spenser Talkington and Martin Claassen},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2606.11550},
eprint = {2606.11550},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.11550},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Polarization-Resolved Photon Statistics of Cavity Quantum Materials
AU - Benjamin Kass
AU - Spenser Talkington
AU - Martin Claassen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/22
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2606.11550
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2606.11550
AB - By forming hybrid light-matter states, optical cavities offer a route for engineering material properties, however, unambiguously probing the effects of light-matter coupling remains difficult. Here, we show that the polarization-resolved statistics of photons transmitted through a cavity, measurable via g^(2), provide one such diagnostic. By relating g^(2) to matter correlation functions such as the Raman structure factor, we link photon bunching and antibunching to material properties. By applying this method to the stripy-to-antiferromagnetic transition in the Kitaev-Heisenberg spin model, we find that polarization-dependent patterns of bunching and antibunching encode the magnetic point-group symmetries of each phase and characterize the behavior at the phase boundary. Finally, we predict measuring g^(2) for output photon pairs polarized orthogonal to the input field will isolate higher-order light-matter scattering processes that probe higher-order material correlations.
ER -