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arXiv:2603.08691

Fermi-pressure-assisted cavity superradiance in a mesoscopic Fermi gas

Francesca Orsi, Ekaterina Fedotova, Rohit Prasad Bhatt, Mae Eichenberger, Léa Dubois, Jean-Philippe Brantut

cond-mat.quant-gasphysics.atom-phquant-phSubmitted Mar 9, 2026• Announced Mar 10, 2026• 0 citations
v1 · Mar 9, 2026v2 · Oct 6, 2026
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Abstract

We study the superradiant phase transition of a mesoscopic Fermi gas comprising between a few tens and a few thousand $^6$Li atoms in a high-finesse cavity across a wide range of densities. We observe a non-monotonic variation of the superradiant threshold as a function of density, with a minimum reached when the Fermi and recoil wavevectors are comparable. The minimum corresponds to a crossover between Fermi pressure-assisted ordering and Pauli blocking of photon scattering, in good agreement with theory. This interpretation is confirmed by a study of the atom-number dependence of the ordering threshold and photon number scaling. Lastly, we demonstrate the operation of our mesoscopic system in a regime where light-induced forces are opposite for the two spin components, leading to an ordered phase with a spin-density-wave character. Our system opens the perspective of studying few-fermion systems with strong and coherent light-matter coupling.

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We study the superradiant phase transition of a mesoscopic Fermi gas comprising between a few tens and a few thousand 6^66Li atoms in a high-finesse cavity across a wide range of densities. We observe a non-monotonic variation of the superradiant threshold as a function of density, with a minimum reached when the Fermi and recoil wavevectors are comparable. The minimum corresponds to a crossover between Fermi pressure-assisted ordering and Pauli blocking of photon scattering, in good agreement with theory. This interpretation is confirmed by a study of the atom-number dependence of the ordering threshold and photon number scaling. Lastly, we demonstrate the operation of our mesoscopic system in a regime where light-induced forces are opposite for the two spin components, leading to an ordered phase with a spin-density-wave character. Our system opens the perspective of studying few-fermion systems with strong and coherent light-matter coupling.
Coherent light-matter interactions between a quantum gas and light in a high-finesse cavity can drive self-ordering phase transitions. To date, such phenomena have involved exclusively single-atom coupling to light, resulting in coupled charge-density or spin-density wave and superradiant order. In this work, we engineer simultaneous coupling of cavity photons to both single atoms and fermionic pairs, which are also mutually coupled due to strong correlations in the unitary Fermi gas. This interplay gives rise to an interference between the charge-density wave and a pair-density wave, where the short-range pair correlation function is spontaneously modulated in space. We observe this effect by tracking the onset of superradiance as the photon-pair coupling is varied in strength and sign, revealing constructive or destructive interference of the three orders with a coupling mediated by strong light-matter and atom-atom interactions. Our observations are compared with mean-field theory where the coupling strength between atomic- and pair-density waves is controlled by higher-order correlations in the Fermi gas. These results demonstrate the potential of cavity quantum electrodynamics to produce and observe exotic orders in strongly correlated matter, paving the way for the quantum simulation of complex quantum matter using ultracold atoms.
We consider the superradiant phase transition of a two-component Fermi gas in a cavity across a Feshbach resonance. It is known that quantum statistics plays a crucial role for the superradiant phase transition in atomic gases; in contrast to bosons, in a Fermi gas this transition exhibits strong density dependence. We show that across a Feshbach resonance, while the two-component Fermi gas passes through the BEC-BCS crossover, the superradiant phase transition undergoes a corresponding crossover from a fermionic behavior on the weakly interacting BCS side, to a bosonic behavior on the molecular Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) side. This intricate statistics crossover makes the superradiance maximally enhanced either in the unitary regime for low densities, in the BCS regime for moderate densities close to Fermi surface nesting, or in the BEC regime for high densities.
Coupling Bose-Einstein condensates to optical cavities has enabled the study of many-body states with long-range interactions. However, equivalent experiments with ultracold Fermi gases have remained largely unexplored. Here, we report an experimental realization of a superradiant quantum phase transition of a degenerate Fermi gas in a transversely pumped optical cavity. The self-ordering checkerboard density pattern of Fermi gases and superradiant transitions of the cavity field spontaneously emerge by increasing the pumping intensity above a threshold value. The effects of Fermi statistics are manifested by an inverse square root scaling of the threshold with atom number and the slow dynamics of low–atomic momentum states. Our work provides an ideal platform for studying nonequilibirium dynamics of many-body states for long-range interacting Fermi gases.
Coherent light-matter interactions between a quantum gas and light in a high-finesse cavity can drive self-ordering phase transitions. To date, such phenomena have involved exclusively single-atom coupling to light, resulting in coupled charge-density or spin-density wave and superradiant order. In this work, we engineer simultaneous coupling of cavity photons to both single atoms and fermionic pairs, which are also mutually coupled due to strong correlations in the unitary Fermi gas. This interplay gives rise to an interference between the charge-density wave and a pair-density wave, where the short-range pair correlation function is spontaneously modulated in space. We observe this effect by tracking the onset of superradiance as the photon-pair coupling is varied in strength and sign, revealing constructive or destructive interference of the three orders with a coupling mediated by strong light-matter and atom-atom interactions. Our observations are compared with mean-field theory where the coupling strength between atomic- and pair-density waves is controlled by higher-order correlations in the Fermi gas. These results demonstrate the potential of cavity quantum electrodynamics to produce and observe exotic orders in strongly correlated matter, paving the way for the quantum simulation of complex quantum matter using ultracold atoms. Cavity-mediated interactions lead to collective effects and ordering in ultracold atomic systems. Here, the authors demonstrate the interplay of different ordered states of ultracold Fermi gases in a cavity, resulting from an intriguing coexistence of photon coupling with both atoms and atom-pairs.
Abstract A density wave (DW) is a fundamental type of long-range order in quantum matter tied to self-organization into a crystalline structure. The interplay of DW order with superfluidity can lead to complex scenarios that pose a great challenge to theoretical analysis. In the past decades, tunable quantum Fermi gases have served as model systems for exploring the physics of strongly interacting fermions, including most notably magnetic ordering1, pairing and superfluidity2, and the crossover from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid to a Bose–Einstein condensate3. Here, we realize a Fermi gas featuring both strong, tunable contact interactions and photon-mediated, spatially structured long-range interactions in a transversely driven high-finesse optical cavity. Above a critical long-range interaction strength, DW order is stabilized in the system, which we identify via its superradiant light-scattering properties. We quantitatively measure the variation of the onset of DW order as the contact interaction is varied across the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid and Bose–Einstein condensate crossover, in qualitative agreement with a mean-field theory. The atomic DW susceptibility varies over an order of magnitude upon tuning the strength and the sign of the long-range interactions below the self-ordering threshold, demonstrating independent and simultaneous control over the contact and long-range interactions. Therefore, our experimental setup provides a fully tunable and microscopically controllable platform for the experimental study of the interplay of superfluidity and DW order.
Understanding the interplay between collective optical response and disorder presents significant challenges in modern many-body physics. While there has been considerable interest and a wealth of theoretical work in recent years, the experimental investigation of the superradiant phase transition and disorder has been unexplored. Here, we report an observation of the localization-driven superradiance with a degenerate Fermi gas in an optical cavity. We show that the dynamics of Fermi gases exhibits Anderson localization in an intracavity incommensurate lattice. The exponential localization is directly observed in both spatial and momentum spaces. We observe the localization driving a nearly vanishing pump threshold in fermionic superradiance when the system is in the localized state. The underlying mechanism of the self-organization and the quantum statistic of the atoms are revealed by measuring the atom momentum distribution and characteristic growth of the superradiant field. Our work provides a platform for studying superradiant quantum phase transition and localization in photon-mediated long-range interacting Fermi gases.