We investigate the near-critical dynamics of atomic density fluctuations in the non-equilibrium self-organization transition of an optically driven quantum gas coupled to a single mode of a cavity. In this system cavity-mediated long-range interactions between atoms, tunable by the drive strength, lead to softening of an excitation mode recently observed in experiments. This phenomenon has previously been studied within a two-mode approximation for the collective motional degrees of freedom of the atomic condensate which results in an effective open-system Dicke model. Here, including the full spectrum of atomic modes we find a finite lifetime for a roton-like mode in the Bogoliubov excitation spectrum that is strongly pump-dependent. The corresponding decay rate and critical exponents for the phase-transition are calculated explaining the non-monotonic pump-dependent atomic damping rate observed in recent experiments. We compute the near-critical behavior of the intra-cavity field fluctuations, that has been previously shown to be enhanced with respect to the equilibrium Dicke model in a two-mode approximation. We highlight the role of the finite size of the system in the suppression of it below the expectations of the open Dicke model.
The Peierls instability toward a charge density wave is a canonical example of phonon-driven strongly correlated physics and is intimately related to topological quantum matter and exotic superconductivity. We propose a method to realize an analogous photon-mediated Peierls transition, using a system of one-dimensional tubes of interacting Bose or Fermi atoms trapped inside a multimode confocal cavity. Pumping the cavity transversely engineers a cavity-mediated metal--to--insulator transition in the atomic system. For strongly interacting bosons in the Tonks-Girardeau limit, this transition ca…
We numerically study the phase diagram of bosons tightly trapped in the lowest band of an optical lattice and dispersively coupled to a single-mode cavity field. The dynamics is encompassed by an extended Bose-Hubbard model. Here, the cavity-mediated interactions are described by a two-body potential term with a global range and by a correlated tunneling term where the hopping amplitude depends on a global observable. We determine the ground state properties in one dimension by means of the density matrix renormalization group algorithm, focusing on the effects due to the correlated tunneling.…
While the recently realized dissipative time crystal in a laser-pumped atom-cavity system in the experiment of Keßler et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 127, 043602 (2021)] is qualitatively consistent with a theoretical description in an idealized limit, here, we investigate the stability of this dissipative time crystal in the presence of an inhomogeneous potential provided by a harmonic trap, and competing short- and infinite-range interactions. We note that these features are ubiquitous in any realization of atom-cavity systems. By mapping out the dynamical phase diagram and studying how it is modifi…
We show that the effective spin-spin interaction between three-level atoms confined in a multimode optical cavity is long-ranged and sign-changing, like the RKKY interaction; therefore, ensembles of such atoms subject to frozen-in positional randomness can realize spin systems having disordered and frustrated interactions. We argue that, whenever the atoms couple to sufficiently many cavity modes, the cavity-mediated interactions give rise to a spin glass. In addition, we show that the quantum dynamics of cavity-confined spin systems is that of a Bose-Hubbard model with strongly disordered hop…
We investigate the energy structures and the dynamics of a Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in a triple-well potential coupled a high finesse optical cavity within a mean field approach. Due to the intrinsic atom-cavity field nonlinearity, several interesting phenomena arise which are the focuses of this work. For the energy structure, the bistability appears in the energy levels due to this atoms-cavity field nonlinearity, and the same phenomena can be found in the intra-cavity photons number. With an increase of the pump-cavity detunings, the higher and lower energy levels show a loop structu…
Supersolids are characterized by the counter-intuitive coexistence of superfluid and crystalline order. Here we study a supersolid phase emerging in the steady state of a driven-dissipative system. We consider a transversely pumped Bose-Einstein condensate trapped along the axis of a ring cavity and coherently coupled to a pair of degenerate counter-propagating cavity modes. Above a threshold pump strength the interference of photons scattered into the two cavity modes results in an emergent superradiant lattice, which spontaneously breaks the continuous translational symmetry towards a period…
We investigate long-range pairing interactions between ultracold fermionic atoms confined in an optical lattice which are mediated by the coupling to a cavity. In the absence of other perturbations, we find three degenerate pairing symmetries for a two-dimensional square lattice. By tuning a weak local atomic interaction via a Feshbach resonance or by tuning a weak magnetic field, the superfluid system can be driven from a topologically trivial s-wave to topologically ordered, chiral superfluids containing Majorana edge states. Our work points out a novel path towards the creation of exotic su…
In dissipative quantum systems, strong symmetries can lead to the existence of conservation laws and multiple steady states. In this work we investigate a strong symmetry for bosonic atoms coupled to an optical cavity, an experimentally relevant system, generalizing the adiabatic elimination techniques and using numerically exact matrix product state methods. We show that for ideal bosons coupled to the cavity multiple steady states exist and in each symmetry sector a dissipative phase transition occurs at a different critical point. This implies that phases of very different nature can coexis…
We propose a mechanism to realize high-yield molecular formation from ultracold atoms. Atom pairs are continuously excited by a laser, and a collective decay into the molecular ground state is induced by a coupling to a lossy cavity mode. Using a combination of analytical and numerical techniques, we demonstrate that the molecular yield can be improved by simply increasing the number of atoms, and can overcome efficiencies of state-of-the-art association schemes. We discuss realistic experimental setups for diatomic polar and nonpolar molecules, opening up collective light matter interactions …
Sign-changing interactions constitute a crucial ingredient in the creation of frustrated many-body systems such as spin glasses. We present here the demonstration of a photon-mediated sign-changing interaction between Bose-Einstein condensed (BEC) atoms in a confocal cavity. The interaction between two atoms is of an unusual, nonlocal form proportional to the cosine of the inner product of the atoms' position vectors. This interaction arises from the differing Gouy phase shifts of the cavity's degenerate modes. Moreover, these Gouy phase anomalies induce an extra pattern of Z_2-symmetry-breaki…
Long-range interactions in quantum gases are predicted to give rise to an excitation spectrum of roton character, similar to that observed in superfluid helium. We investigate the excitation spectrum of a Bose-Einstein condensate with cavity-mediated long-range interactions, which couple all particles to each other. Increasing the strength of the interaction leads to a softening of an excitation mode at a finite momentum, preceding a superfluid to supersolid phase transition. We study the mode softening spectroscopically across the phase transition using a variant of Bragg spectroscopy. The me…
We present a theoretical study on the robustness of multi-photon states in a frustrated lattice of coupled nonlinear optical cavities, which are described by a driven-dissipative Bose-Hubbard model. In particular, we focus here on a Lieb lattice with two elementary cells and periodic boundary conditions. Due to the geometric frustration of the lattice, the non-equilibrium steady state can exhibit dark sites with low photon density and strong correlations, ascribable to the population of multi-photon modes. We explore the sensitivity of such strong correlations on the random inhomogeneity of th…
We propose a novel scheme to generate the spin-orbit coupling for a condensate placed inside an optical cavity by using a standing wave and a traveling wave. It is shown that the interplay of the laser lights and the cavity gives rise to rich quantum phases. Our scheme also generates an nontrivial lattice of the magnetic flux, which may facilitate the study of the exotic quantum phases.
We investigate the dynamical phase transition of two-component Bose-Einstein condensate with nonlinear tunneling, which is trapped inside a double-well and dispersively coupled to a single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity with one moving end mirror driven by a single mode standing field. The nonlinear tunneling interaction leads to an increase of stability points and riches the phase diagram of the system. It is shown that the appearance of the moving end mirror speeds up the tunneling of Bose-Einstein condensates, which makes population difference between two wells and regulates the numb…
We study matter wave bistability in a spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensate dispersively coupled to a unidirectional ring cavity. A unique feature is that the population exchange among different modes of matter fields are accomplished via the spin-exchange collisions. We show that the interplay between the atomic spin mixing and the cavity light field can lead to a strong matter wave nonlinearity, making matter wave bistability in a cavity at the single-photon level achievable.
We numerically obtain the full time-evolution of a parametrically-driven dissipative Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity and investigate the implications of driving for the phase diagram. Beyond the normal and superradiant phases, a third nonequilibrium phase emerges as a manybody parametric resonance. This dynamical normal phase switches between two symmetry-broken superradiant configurations. The switching implies a breakdown of the system's mapping to the Dicke model. Unlike the other phases, the dynamical normal phase shows features of nonintegrability and thermalization.
We propose the dynamical stabilization of a nonequilibrium order in a driven dissipative system comprised an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate inside a high finesse optical cavity, pumped with an optical standing wave operating in the regime of anomalous dispersion. When the amplitude of the pump field is modulated close to twice the characteristic limit-cycle frequency of the unmodulated system, a stable subharmonic response is found. The dynamical phase diagram shows that this subharmonic response occurs in a region expanded with respect to that where stable limit-cycle dynamics occurs for the…
Optical cavity QED provides a platform with which to explore quantum many-body physics in driven-dissipative systems. Single-mode cavities provide strong, infinite-range photon-mediated interactions among intracavity atoms. However, these global all-to-all couplings are limiting from the perspective of exploring quantum many-body physics beyond the mean-field approximation. The present work demonstrates that local couplings can be created using multimode cavity QED. This is established through measurements of the threshold of a superradiant, self-organization phase transition versus atomic pos…
We study ground-state properties and dynamics of a dilute ultracold atomic gas in a double well potential. The Gaussian barrier separating the two wells derives from the interaction between the atoms and a quantized field of a driven Fabry-Perot cavity. Due to intrinsic atom-field nonlinearity, several novel phenomena arise being the focus of this work. For the ground state, there is a critical pumping amplitude in which the atoms self-organize and the intra cavity field amplitude drastically increases. In the dynamical analysis, we show that the Josephson oscillations depend strongly on the a…
We study models of itinerant spinless fermions with random long-range interactions. We motivate such models from descriptions of fermionic atoms in multi-mode optical cavities. The solution of an infinite-range model yields a metallic phase which has glassy charge dynamics, and a localized glass phase with suppressed density of states at low energies. We compare these phases to the conventional disordered Fermi liquid, and the insulating electron glass of semiconductors. Prospects for the realization of such glassy phases in cold atom systems are discussed.
A complex quantum system can be constructed by coupling simple quantum elements to one another. For example, trapped-ion or superconducting quantum bits may be coupled by Coulomb interactions, mediated by the exchange of virtual photons. Alternatively quantum objects can be coupled by the exchange of real photons, particularly when driven within resonators that amplify interactions with a single electro-magnetic mode. However, in such an open system, the capacity of a coupling channel to convey quantum information or generate entanglement may be compromised. Here, we realize phase-coherent int…
Cold atoms in cavity provides a new platform for exploring exotic many-body phases. Here we explore the dynamics of a two-component condensate coupled to a finesse cavity, in which the Raman coupling is mediated by pumping laser and cavity mode. In this model, the energy scale of cavity mode is several order of magnitude bigger than that in the condensate, thus the small fluctuations in the cavity field may have important consequence in the dynamics of condensate. Beyond the steady-state approximaton, we show the cavity can play two different roles to this dynamics. In the first case, it impri…
The interaction between an atomic ensemble and a light mode in a high-finesse optical cavity can easily reach the strong-coupling regime, where quantum effects dominate. In this regime, the interaction can be used to generate both atom-light and atom-atom entanglement. We analyze the dominant effects on the collective atomic state and the light field, and derive a unified approach that can account for atomic entanglement induced both by measurements on the light field, and by ignoring the state of the light field altogether. We present analytical expressions for the entanglement induced by the…
We theoretically study the driven-dissipative Harper-Hofstadter model on a 2D square lattice in the presence of a weak harmonic trap. Without pumping and loss, the eigenstates of this system can be understood, in certain limits, as momentum-space toroidal Landau levels, where the Berry curvature, a geometrical property of an energy band, acts like a momentum-space magnetic field. We show that key features of these eigenstates can be observed in the steady-state of the driven-dissipative system under a monochromatic coherent drive, and present a realistic proposal for an optical experiment usin…
We show that a one-dimensional Hubbard model with all-to-all coupling may exhibit many-body localization in the presence of local disorder. We numerically identify the parameter space where many-body localization occurs using exact diagonalization and finite-size scaling. The time evolution from a random initial state exhibits features consistent with the localization picture. The dynamics can be observed with quantum gases in optical cavities, localization can be revealed through the time-dependent dynamics of the light emitted by the resonator.
Recently, the possibility of inducing superconductivity for electrons in two dimensional materials has been proposed via cavity-mediated pairing. The cavity-mediated electron-electron interactions are long range, which has two main effects: firstly, within the standard BCS-type pairing mediated by adiabatic photons, the superconducting critical temperature depends polynomially on the coupling strength, instead of the exponential dependence characterizing the phonon-mediated pairing; secondly, as we show here, the effect of photon fluctuations is significantly enhanced. These mediate novel non-…
