We study the coherent cooperative phenomena of the system composed of two interacting atomic ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. Remarkably, the system exhibits the Dicke-like quantum phase transition and entanglement behavior although the governing Hamiltonian is fundamentally different from the spin-boson Dicke Hamiltonian, offering the opportunity for investigating collective matter-light dynamics with pure matter waves. The model can be realized with two Bose-Einstein condensates or atomic ensembles trapped in two optical cavities coupled to each other. The interaction between the two separate samples is induced by virtual photon exchange.
We study the coherent cooperative phenomena of the system composed of two interacting atomic ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. Remarkably, the system exhibits the Dicke-like quantum phase transition and entanglement behavior although the governing Hamiltonian is fundamentally different from the spin-boson Dicke Hamiltonian, offering the opportunity for investigating collective matter-light dynamics with pure matter waves. The model can be realized with two Bose-Einstein condensates or atomic ensembles trapped in two optical cavities coupled to each other. The interaction between the two separate samples is induced by virtual photon exchange.
A phase transition describes the sudden change of state in a physical system, such as the transition between a fluid and a solid. Quantum gases provide the opportunity to establish a direct link between experiment and generic models which capture the underlying physics. A fundamental concept to describe the collective matter-light interaction is the Dicke model which has been predicted to show an intriguing quantum phase transition. Here we realize the Dicke quantum phase transition in an open system formed by a Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to an optical cavity, and observe the emergence of a self-organized supersolid phase. The phase transition is driven by infinitely long-ranged interactions between the condensed atoms. These are induced by two-photon processes involving the cavity mode and a pump field. We show that the phase transition is described by the Dicke Hamiltonian, including counter-rotating coupling terms, and that the supersolid phase is associated with a spontaneously broken spatial symmetry. The boundary of the phase transition is mapped out in quantitative agreement with the Dicke model. The work opens the field of quantum gases with long-ranged interactions, and provides access to novel quantum phases.
Dicke model describes a collective interaction between the two-level atoms and the light cavity and has been predicted to show a peculiar quantum phase transition, which is a second-order phase transition from a normal phase (in a weak-coupling strength) to a superradiant phase (in a strong-coupling strength). The model plays an important role in illustrating the quantum ground-state properties of many-body macroscopic quantum states. In the experiment, Dicke quantum phase transition in an open system could be formed by a Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. This experiment on the Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in the optical cavity have opened new frontiers, which could combine the cold atoms with quantum optics and makes it possible to enter into the strongly coupled regime of cavity quantum electrodynamics. In strong coupled regime, the atoms exchange the photons many times before spontaneous emission and cavity losses set in. It has become a hot research topic in recent years and plays an important role in many fields of modern physics, such as condensed matter physics, nuclear physics, etc. It can be applied to the manipulation of the geometric phase and entanglement in quantum information and computing. Quantum phase transition has been widely studied for the Dicke model as a typical example. Many different research methods about the mean-field approximation have been used to analyze the ground state properties of the Dicke model. In this paper, we study the ground state properties of two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in a single-mode cavity. Meanwhile, the associated quantum phase transition is described by the spin-coherent-state variational method, whose advantage is that the ground state energy and wave function can be obtained without the thermodynamic limit. By taking the average in the boson coherent state, we obtain an equivalent effective pesudospin Hamiltonian, which will be diagonalized by using the spin coherent state. Finally, we can obtain the energy functional, which is the basics of the variation to obtain the numerical solution of photon number and the expression of the atomic number and the ground state energy. This paper presents a rich phase diagram, which can be manipulated by changing the atom-field coupling imbalance between two components and the atom-field frequency detuning. While in the single-mode Dicke model there exist only the normal phase and the superradiation phase. When the frequency of one component atom is zero or the frequency of the two component atoms are equal in optical cavity, the system returns to the standard Dicke model, in which there occurs the second-order phase transition from the normal phase to the superradiant phase by adjusting the atom-field coupling. In conclusion, we discover that the stimulated radiation comes from the collective state of atomic population inversion, which does not exist in the single-mode Dicke model. Meanwhile, the new stimulated-radiation state S and S, which can only be produced by one component of the atom, are observed in the two-component Bose-Einstein condensates in the single-mode optical cavity. By adjusting the atom-field coupling imbalance and the atom-field frequency detuning (the blue or red detuning), the order of the superradiation state and the stimulated-radiation states can be exchanged between the two components of the atom.
The Dicke model describing an ensemble of two-state atoms interacting with a single quantized mode of the electromagnetic field (with omission of the ${\stackrel{\ifmmode \hat{}\else \^{}\fi{}}{A}}^{2}$ term) exhibits a zero-temperature phase transition at a critical value of the dipole coupling strength. We propose a scheme based on multilevel atoms and cavity-mediated Raman transitions to realize an effective Dicke model operating in the phase transition regime. Optical light from the cavity carries signatures of the critical behavior, which is analyzed for the thermodynamic limit where the number of atoms is very large.
We report on the first experimental realization of the Dicke quantum phase transition realized in the quantum motion of a Bose–Einstein condensate coupled to an optical cavity. Conceptually, the transition is driven by cavity-mediated long-range interactions, giving rise to the emergence of a self-organized supersolid phase. The Dicke phase transition, predicted in 1973, has not been demonstrated experimentally before this work, both due to fundamental and technological reasons. These challenges have been overcome in the present thesis by employing atomic momentum states of a Bose-Einstein condensate, which are coupled via two-photon Raman transitions involving a cavity photon and a free-space pump photon. This open-system implementation of the Dicke model allows to tune all relevant parameters and offers a unique detection scheme to monitor the manybody system in real time. We demonstrate that the phase transition is accompanied by a macroscopically occupied cavity field and a striking change in the atomic momentum distribution, due to spontaneous self-organization of the atomic density on a checkerboard lattice. The boundary of the transition is mapped out by scanning two parameters of the Dicke model, to reveal a phase diagram in close agreement with the model description. Two different ordered configurations are allowed in the superradiant phase, giving rise to the concept of spontaneous symmetry breaking at the phase transition. We experimentally distinguish the symmetry-broken states and study the origin of the symmetry-breaking process. The finite spatial extension of our system induces a small symmetry-breaking field which changes randomly on each experimental realization. The influence of this field is studied and shown to diminish upon dynamically crossing the transition point with increasing transition rates.
Coupling of light and matter can lead to the emergence of new collective phenomena, which render a separate description in terms of light or matter impossible. To understand and describe such cases, new composite light matter objects need to be introduced. In this chapter, we present theoretical studies of two examples of such systems. The first is an assembly of coupled Rabi cavities that shows coherent behaviour similar to Dicke super-radiance. The second is a Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to the optical modes of a cavity, that mediate an effective long range interaction between the atoms of the condensate and drive it into a supersolid phase.
We investigate the entanglement properties of an ensemble of atoms interacting with a single bosonic field mode via the Dicke (superradiance) Hamiltonian. The model exhibits a quantum phase transition and a well-understood thermodynamic limit, allowing the identification of both quantum and semi-classical many-body features in the behavior of the entanglement. We consider entanglement between the atoms and field, as well both bi- and multi- partite entanglement between atoms. In the thermodynamic limit, we give exact results for all entanglement partitions and observe a logarithmic divergence of the atom-field entanglement, and discontinuities in the pairwise and multipartite entanglement.