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arXiv:2207.01724 · Physical Review A

Ground-state bistability of cold atoms in a cavity

B. Gábor, Dávid Nagy, A. Dombi, Thomas W. Clark, Francis I. B. Williams, K. V. Adwaith, András Vukics, P. Domokos

Published Feb 15, 2023• 15 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We experimentally demonstrate an optical bistability between two hyperfine ground states of trapped, cold atoms, using a single mode of an optical resonator in the collective strong coupling regime. Whereas in the familiar case, the bistable region is created through atomic saturation, we report an effect between states of high quantum purity, which is essential for future information storage. The source of nonlinearity is a cavity-assisted pumping between ground states of the atoms and the stability depends on the intensity of two driving lasers. We interpret the phenomenon in terms of the recent paradigm of first-order, driven-dissipative phase transitions, where the transmitted and driving fields are understood as the order and control parameters, respectively. A semiclassical mean-field theory is invoked to describe the nontrivial two-dimensional phase diagram arising from the competition of the two drive. The saturation-induced bistability is recovered for infinite drive in one of the controls. The order of the transition is confirmed experimentally by hysteresis in the order parameter when either of the two control parameters is swept repeatedly across the bistability region.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.107.023713

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Abstract We report on the observation of a novel manifestation of saturation-induced optical bistability in a resonantly pumped optical ring cavity interacting strongly with a cloud of atoms via a narrow atomic transition. The bistability emerges, above a critical pump rate, as an additional peak in the cavity’s normal mode spectrum close to atomic resonance. This third transmission peak is usually suppressed due to strong resonant absorption, but in our experiment it is visible because of the linewidth of the atomic transition being much smaller than that of the cavity, which sets the experiment into the bad-cavity regime. Relying on complete saturation of the transition, this bistability has a quantum origin and cannot be mimicked by a classical material presenting a nonlinear refraction index. The appearance of the central peak in addition to the normal modes is predicted by a semi-classical model derived from the Tavis–Cummings Hamiltonian from which we derive a bistability phase diagram that connects our observations with former work on optical bistability in the good cavity regime. The phase diagram reveals several so far unexplored bistable phases.
Cold atoms, driven by a laser and simultaneously coupled to the quantum field of an optical resonator, may self-organize in periodic structures. These structures are supported by the optical lattice, which emerges from the laser light they scatter into the cavity mode and form when the laser intensity exceeds a threshold value. We study theoretically the quantum ground state of these structures above the pump threshold of self-organization by mapping the atomic dynamics of the self-organized crystal to a Bose-Hubbard model. We find that the quantum ground state of the self-organized structure can be the one of a Mott insulator, depending on the pump strength of the driving laser. For very large pump strengths, where the intracavity-field intensity is maximum and one would expect a Mott-insulator state, we find intervals of parameters where the phase is compressible. These states could be realized in existing experimental setups.
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We theoretically investigate the optical bistability phenomenon in an ensemble of NNN non-interacting three-level atoms trapped inside an optical cavity. The atoms are in a ΛΛΛ-level configuration, where one atomic transition is coupled by a cavity mode, while the other one is coupled by a classical field. In addition, we consider a pumping field driving the cavity mode. With this system, we are able to observe new kinds of hysteresis, while scanning either the frequency of the pumping field or the Rabi frequency (intensity) of the control field. We show that they can be highly controllable via external parameters of the system, achieving very narrow widths, thus being very useful for building new devices, such as small fluctuation detectors in either frequency or intensity of laser fields.