English

Atom-Photon Bound States in Fractal Photonic Lattices: Localization Length and Anomalous Diffusion

Quantum Physics 2026-05-25 v1 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Optics

Abstract

We study atom-photon bound states seeded by two-level emitters coupled to self-similar photonic lattices. By expressing the photonic Green's function through the heat kernel, we show that the far-field localization length obeys ξΔ1/dw\xi \sim \Delta^{-1/d_w}, with the detuning Δ\Delta from the lower spectral edge and the walk dimension dwd_w of the underlying fractal. This scaling is controlled by anomalous diffusion and does not rely on translational invariance or a band-edge effective-mass approximation. Exact diagonalization on Sierpi\'nski gaskets, pyramids, Vicsek graphs, and Sierpi\'nski carpets confirms the far-field prediction once the bath Hamiltonian is rendered Laplacian-like by compensating the local inhomogeneity in the connectivities with on-site potentials. In the near field, the bound-state amplitude exhibits an additional algebraic variation. For nested finitely ramified fractals, the corresponding exponent agrees with the classical resistance/ first-passage scaling, whereas Sierpi\'nski carpets display clear deviations from this simple law. Our results extend structured-bath waveguide QED to self-similar non-periodic geometries and connect bound-state profiles to transport exponents of the underlying fractal lattice.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.23625,
  title  = {Atom-Photon Bound States in Fractal Photonic Lattices: Localization Length and Anomalous Diffusion},
  author = {Florian Bönsel and Flore K. Kunst and Federico Roccati},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.23625},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

11 pages, 5 figures