We gain quantitative insights on effects of light-matter interactions on correlated quantum matter by quantum Monte Carlo simulations. We introduce a wormhole algorithm for the paradigmatic Dicke-Ising model which combines the light-matter interaction of the Dicke model with Ising interactions. The quantum phase diagrams for ferro- and antiferromagnetic interactions on the chain and the square lattice are determined. The occurring superradiant phase transitions are in the same universality class as the Dicke model, leading to a well-known peculiar finite-size scaling that we elucidate in terms of scaling above the upper critical dimension. For the ferromagnetic case, the transition between the normal and the superradiant phase is of second order with Dicke criticality (first order) for large (small) longitudinal fields separated by a multicritical point. For antiferromagnetic interactions, we establish the light-matter analog of a lattice supersolid with off-diagonal superradiant and diagonal magnetic order and determine the nature of all transition lines. Our achievements allow to quantitatively enter the domain of mesoscopic light-matter systems, which is an increasingly prominent topic at the interface of quantum optics and condensed matter physics.
We give a thermodynamic-limit account of Dicke models with one cavity mode coupled collectively to interacting matter. Integrating out the cavity yields an exact self-consistent functional of the magnetisation
m,
e~(m)=λm2/2+emat(λm): a classical penalty on the bare-matter energy
emat in the self-consistent field
h=λm, with
λ=g2/(2ωc) the collective coupling. Supplying only that scalar field, the photon creates no phase the matter does not already possess. States holding a minimum form one connected curve,
λ(m)=μmat−1(m)/m, so superradiant first-order transitions are folds of one equation of state not crossings of disjoint sheets, and a fold can straighten into a continuous line. The remaining rules are local, each with a spectral counterpart: onset by the leading singularity of
emat (a softening polariton), order by one bare response -- the Landau quartic, or a divergent susceptibility forcing a Larkin-Pikin (LP) fold. For the Dicke-Ising model the Landau coefficients are exact, giving in closed form the second-order boundary and both zero-quartic fields, one tricritical; a
1/d expansion maps all four phases, with the AS-PS transition first order for
d≤duc=3=4−z (LP) and tricritical points in the
(d,ε) plane above. At the degenerate quadruple point the matter is a Rydberg-blockade chain, solved by strict-blockade iDMRG: the antiferromagnetic superradiant (AS) phase persists as a finite 1D wedge, first order into the corner. Other magnets: the triangular antiferromagnet keeps a continuous superradiant-superradiant line (3D-XY, no fold forced); the compass chain a BKT-functional onset; the Heisenberg and XX chains, via a conserved operator, a spectrally silent first-order onset; and the Dicke-Heisenberg diagram an exact tricritical point at the saturation corner.
The superradiant phenomenon, usually described by the Dicke model, is a hallmark of strong light-matter interaction. We explore how matter-matter interactions influence this phenomenon by performing ground-state simulations of Dicke-like models with both isotropic and anisotropic interactions. We find that Ising-type interactions produce two qualitatively distinct phase boundaries, one of which gives rise to an antiferromagnetic-normal phase connected to the superradiant regime via a first-order phase transition. Under anisotropic couplings, we uncover a strongly correlated phase where in-plane spin order coexists with superradiance, exhibiting sublinear scaling of the photon occupation per site and power-law decay of spin correlations. Furthermore, superradiance is strengthened by tuning either isotropic or anisotropic interactions, highlighting the role of intrinsic many-body correlations in shaping light-matter quantum phases.
In the thermodynamic limit, the Dicke-Ising chain maps exactly onto an effective self-consistent matter Hamiltonian with the photon field acting solely as a self-consistent effective field. As a consequence, no quantum correlations between photons and spins are needed to understand the quantum phase diagram. This enables us to determine the quantum phase diagram in the thermodynamic limit using numerical linked-cluster expansions combined with density matrix renormalization group calculations (NLCE+DMRG) to solve the resulting self-consistent matter Hamiltonian. This includes magnetically ordered phases with significantly improved accuracy compared to previous estimates. For ferromagnetic Ising couplings, we refine the location of the multicritical point governing the change in the order of the superradiant phase transition, reaching a relative accuracy of
10−4. For antiferromagnetic Ising couplings, we confirm the existence of the narrow antiferromagnetic superradiant phase in the thermodynamic limit. The effective matter Hamiltonian framework identifies the antiferromagnetic superradiant phase as the many-body ground state of an antiferromagnetic transverse-field Ising model with longitudinal field. This phase emerges through continuous Dicke-type polariton condensation from the antiferromagnetic normal phase, followed by a first-order transition to the paramagnetic superradiant phase. Thus, NLCE+DMRG provides a precise determination of the Dicke-Ising phase diagram in one dimension by solving the self-consistent effective matter Hamiltonian.
We show that semiclassical states adapted to the symmetry of the Hamiltonian are an excellent approximation to the exact quantum solution of the ground and first excited states of the Dicke model. Their overlap with the exact quantum states is very close to 1 except in a close vicinity of the quantum phase transition. Furthermore, they have analytic forms in terms of the model parameters and allow us to calculate analytically the expectation values of field and matter observables. Some of these differ considerably from results obtained via the standard coherent states and by means of Holstein-Primakoff series expansion of the Dicke Hamiltonian. Comparison with exact solutions obtained numerically supports our results. In particular, it is shown that the expectation values of the number of photons and of the number of excited atoms have no singularities at the phase transition. We comment on why other authors have previously found otherwise.
Recently, the authors of the commented PRL presented the $ N=\infty $ solution of the $ U(1)/Z_2 $ Dicke model studied by us previously. Here we point out that (1) The authors missed an important transformation relating the two parameter regimes, so their separate discussions on the two regimes is redundant. (2) Both $ N=\infty $ classical limit and $ 1/N $ quantum fluctuations have been achieved in two of our previously published papers. It is the $ 1/N $ quantum fluctuations which lead to the non-trivial new quantum phenomena. In view of only a few $ N=2\sim 9 $ qubits inside a circuit QED microwave cavity, they can be tested in near future experiments. (3) Several possible experimental implementations of the $ U(1)/Z_2 $ Dicke model have been proposed before and recently experimentally realized.