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. The latter is responsible for the onset of bond orders, manifesting in one insulating and two gapless bond ordered phases. We discuss the resulting phases for different geometries that correspond to different relative strengths of the correlated tunneling coefficient. We finally analyze the scaling of the entanglement entropy in the gapless bond ordered phases that appear entirely due to global interactions and determine the corresponding central charges.
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 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…
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…
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…
We consider a model of a light-matter system, in which a system of fermions (or bosons) is coupled to a photonic mode that drives a phase transitions in the matter degrees of freedom. Starting from a simplified analytical model, we show that the entanglement between light and matter vanishes at small and large coupling strength, and shows a peak in the proximity of the transition. We perform numerical simulations for a specific model (relevant to both solid state and cold atom platforms), and show that the entanglement displays critical behavior at the transition, and features maximum suscepti…
Self-Ordered Supersolid in Spinor Condensates with Cavity-Mediated Spin-Momentum-Mixing Interactions
CAS Key Laboratory of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院理论物理研究所、中国科学院理论物理重点实验室）；CAS Center for Excellence in Topological Quantum Computation, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学、中国科学院拓扑量子计算卓越创新中心）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）
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 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.
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.
Ultracold bosonic atoms in optical lattices self-organize into a variety of structural and quantum phases when placed into a single-mode cavity and pumped by a laser. Cavity optomechanical effects induce an atom density modulation at the cavity-mode wave length that competes with the optical lattice arrangement. Simultaneously short-range interactions via particle hopping promote superfluid order, such that a variety of structural and quantum coherent phases can occur. We analyze the emerging phase diagram in two dimensions by means of an extended Bose-Hubbard model using a local mean field ap…
We analyze the ground-state entanglement entropy of the extended Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions. This model describes the low-energy dynamics of ultracold bosons tightly bound to an optical lattice and dispersively coupled to a cavity mode. The competition between onsite repulsion and global cavity-induced interactions leads to a rich phase diagram, which exhibits superfluid, supersolid, and insulating (Mott and checkerboard) phases. We use a slave-boson treatment of harmonic quantum fluctuations around the mean-field solution and calculate the entanglement entropy across …
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…
Topological materials have potential applications for quantum technologies. Non-interacting topological materials, such as e.g., topological insulators and superconductors, are classified by means of fundamental symmetry classes. It is instead only partially understood how interactions affect topological properties. Here, we discuss a model where topology emerges from the quantum interference between single-particle dynamics and global interactions. The system is composed by soft-core bosons that interact via global correlated hopping in a one-dimensional lattice. The onset of quantum interfer…
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…
Atom-Molecule Superradiance and Entanglement with Cavity-Mediated Three-Body Interactions
State Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics, Tsinghua University（清华大学物理系、低维量子物理国家重点实验室）；Peng Huanwu Collaborative Center for Research and Education, Beihang University（北京航空航天大学彭恒武教育与研究中心）
Laser cooled and quantum degenerate atoms are widely being pursued as quantum simulators that may explain the behavior of strongly correlated material systems, and as the basis of today's most precise sensors. A key challenge towards these goals is to understand and control coherent interactions between the atoms. Here, we observe long-range exchange interactions mediated by an optical cavity, which manifest as tunable spin-spin interactions on the pseudo spin-1/2 system composed of the millihertz linewidth clock transition in strontium. We observe the so-called one axis twisting dynamics, the…
Simulation of topological superconductors and their competing orders using photon-mediated interactions
JILA, NIST and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校物理系、NIST和JILA）；Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado, Boulder（科罗拉多大学博尔德分校量子物质理论中心）；Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, University of Chicago（芝加哥大学普里茨克分子工程学院）
Cavity-QED is a promising avenue for the deterministic generation of entangled and spin-squeezed states for quantum metrology. One archetypal scheme generates squeezing via collective one-axis twisting interactions. However, we show that in implementations using optical transitions in long-lived atoms the achievable squeezing is fundamentally limited by collectively enhanced emission into the cavity mode which is generated in parallel with the cavity-mediated spin-spin interactions. We propose an alternative scheme which generates a squeezed state that is protected from collective emission, an…
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.
Atoms in high-finesse optical resonators interact via the photons they multiply scatter into the cavity modes. The dynamics is characterized by dispersive and dissipative optomechanical long-range forces, which are mediated by the cavity photons, and exhibits a steady state for certain parameter regimes. In standing-wave cavities the atoms can form stable spatial gratings. Moreover, their asymptotic distribution is a Maxwell-Boltzmann whose effective temperature is controlled by the laser parameters. In this work we show that in a two-mode standing-wave cavity the stationary state possesses th…
We study a one-dimensional array of bosons with infinite-range interactions mediated by a laser-driven dissipative optical cavity. The cavity-mediated infinite-range interactions open up a new pathway to fermionization, hitherto only known for dipolar bosons due to their long-range interactions. In parameter ranges attainable in state-of-the-art experiments, we systematically compare observables for bosons and fermions with infinite-range interactions. At large enough laser pump power, many observables, including density distributions in real and momentum space, correlation functions, eigenval…
High-finesse optical cavity allows the establishment of long-range interactions between bosons in an optical lattice when most cold atoms experiments are restricted to short-range interactions. Supersolid phases have recently been experimentally observed in such systems. Using both exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations and Gutzwiller approximation, we study the ground state phase diagrams of a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions which describes such experiments. In addition to superfluid and insulating Mott phases, the infinite-range checkerboard interactions in…
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-…
We study a system with competing short- and global-range interactions in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Using a mean-field approximation we obtain the phase diagram of the system and observe four different phases: a superfluid, a supersolid, a Mott insulator and a charge density wave, where the transitions between the various phases can be either of first or second order. We qualitatively support these results using Monte-Carlo simulations. An analysis of the low-energy excitations shows that the second-order phase transition from the charge density wave to the supersolid is associat…
We realize a spin-orbit interaction between the collective spin precession and center-of-mass motion of a trapped ultracold atomic gas, mediated by spin- and position-dependent dispersive coupling to a driven optical cavity. The collective spin, precessing near its highest-energy state in an applied magnetic field, can be approximated as a negative-mass harmonic oscillator. When the Larmor precession and mechanical motion are nearly resonant, cavity mediated coupling leads to a negative-mass instability, driving exponential growth of a correlated mode of the hybrid system. We observe this grow…
