Classical simulation of the Hubbard-Holstein dynamics with optical waveguide lattices

A classical analog simulator of the two-site Hubbard-Holstein model, describing the dynamics of two correlated electrons coupled with local phonons, is proposed based on light transport in engineered optical waveguide arrays. Our photonic analog simulator enables us to map the temporal dynamics of the quantum system in Fock space into spatial propagation of classical light waves in the evanescently coupled waveguides of the array. In particular, in the strong correlation regime the periodic temporal dynamics, related to the excitation of Holstein polarons with equal energy spacing, can be visualized as a periodic self-imaging phenomenon of the light beam along the waveguide array and explained in terms of generalized Bloch oscillations of a single particle in a semi-infinite inhomogeneous tight-binding lattice.