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Physical Review A

Phase Transition in the Dicke Model of Superradiance

Y. K. Wang, F. T. Hioe

Published Mar 1, 1973• 745 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A system of $N$ two-level atoms interacting with a quantized field, the so-called Dicke model of superradiance, is studied. By making use of a set of Glauber's coherent states for the field, the free energy of the system is calculated exactly in the thermodynamic limit. The results agree precisely with those obtained by Hepp and Lieb, who studied the same model using a different method. The exhibition of a phase transition of the system is presented mathematically in an elementary manner in our approach. The generalization to the case of finitely many radiation modes is also presented.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.7.831

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Physical Review A•Nov 1, 1973•383 citations
A system of NNN two-level atoms interacting with a quantized field, the so-called Dicke model of superradiance, is studied. By making use of a set of Glauber's coherent states for the field, the free energy of the system is calculated exactly in the thermodynamic limit. The results agree precisely with those obtained by Hepp and Lieb, who studied the same model using a different method. The exhibition of a phase transition of the system is presented mathematically in an elementary manner in our approach. The generalization to the case of finitely many radiation modes is also presented.
The equilibrium properties of a system of N two-level atoms interacting with a quantized field, the so-called Dicke model of superradiance, are evaluated exactly by the 'thermodynamically equivalent Hamiltonian' method of Bogoliubov et at. (1957). The results are identical with those obtained by Hepp and Lieb (1973) and Wang and Hioe (1973). The thermodynamically equivalent Hamiltonian is shown to be equivalent to the mean field Hamiltonian of the Ising model, which indicates why the transition from the 'normal' to the 'superradiant' state of the Dicke model is similar to the transition from the disordered to the ordered state of the Ising model.
In this doctoral thesis, the thermodynamic phases und phase transitions of a generalised Dicke model are studied and characterised. Both, finite and vanishing temperatures are considered. The Dicke model of quantum optics describes collective phenomena which occur when light interacts with a many-atom system. In the thermodynamic limit, a so-called Hepp–Lieb superradiant phase transition sets in. A superradiant phase develops for low temperatures or strong coupling between light and atoms, which is characterised by a macroscopic excitation of the light field and a spontaneous, collective polarisation of the atoms. This thesis discusses a generalised version of the Dicke model, which is described by a quantum mechanical system consisting of three-level atoms in Lambda-configuration and two modes of a resonator. By means of the Holstein–Primakoff transformation, the Hamiltonian of this system is written in terms of four interacting, non-linear oscillators, which can be linearised in the thermodynamic limit, yielding the ground-state energy as well as the low-energy excitations. The phase diagram consisting of two superradiant phases separated by continuous and first-order phase transitions is derived. In order to clarify the question whether or not the superradiant phase transition of this generalised Dicke model can be observed experimentally for real atoms, the significance of the diamagnetic term is discussed. In contrast to the original Dicke model, superradiant phase transitions are possible in principle. This is due to the first-order phase transitions. In addition, a no-go theorem for continuous superradiant phase transitions is presented. The argument is based on the Thomas–Reiche–Kuhn sum rule. Last, we study the superradiant phase transition of the generalised Dicke model at finite temperatures. Therefore, the partition sum is computed and analysed in the thermodynamic limit using Laplace’s method. At finite temperatures, the properties of the phase diagram and phases remain. However, here all phase transitions are of first order.
We study the numerical solutions of the Dicke Hamiltonian, which describes a system of many two level atoms interacting with a monochromatic radiation field into a cavity. The Dicke model is an example of a quantum collective behavior which shows superradiant quantum phase transitions in the thermodynamic limit. Results obtained employing two different bases are compared. Both of them use the pseudospin basis to describe the atomic states. For the photon states we use in one case Fock states, while in the other case we use a basis built over a particular coherent state, associated to each atomic state. It is shown that, when the number of atoms increases, the description of the ground state of the system in the superradiant phase requires an equivalent number of photons to be included. This imposes a strong limit to the states that can be calculated using Fock states, while the dimensionality needed to obtain convergent results in the other basis decreases when the atomic number increases, allowing calculations that are very difficult in the Fock basis. Naturally, it reduces also the computing time, economizing computing resources. We show results for the energy, the photon number and the number of excited atoms, for the ground and the first excited state.
The transition to the super-radiant regime in the Dicke model of two-level atoms interacting with a one-mode radiation field has been argued to be impossible for many years. Recently, however, experimental results show that this transition is possible in an open system [1, 2]. Here we exhibit the power of the use of coherent states with restored symmetry to describe the superradiant regime of the Dicke Hamiltonian. These symmetry-adapted states allow for an analytic description of both the ground and first excited states. From these, analytical expressions for all expectation values of interest are obtained, valid for any number of atoms. All these results are exact in the thermodynamic limit.
The Dicke model of superradiance studied in a previous paper by Wang and Hioe is generalized (i) to include an interaction energy of the form ${a}^{\ifmmode\dagger\else\textdagger\fi{}}{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{+}+a{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{\ensuremath{-}}$, where $a,{a}^{\ifmmode\dagger\else\textdagger\fi{}}$ and ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{\ensuremath{-}},{\ensuremath{\sigma}}^{+}$ are the usual photon and spin operators, (ii) to include the spatial variation of the electromagnetic field, and (iii) to include the possibility of small classical motions of atoms from their equilibrium positions. The free energies of these generalized models are calculated exactly in the thermodynamic limit, and their phase-transition properties are presented.
The thermodynamic properties of several systems of multilevel atoms interacting with a quantized radiation field are investigated. We allow a quantum-mechanical treatment of the translational degrees of freedom and do not require the rotating-wave approximation. In the finite-photon-mode case one can calculate the free energy per atom in the thermodynamic limit exactly and rigorously. In the infinite-mode case we only get upper and lower bounds, but these are sufficient to give conditions for thermodynamic stability and instability. The kind of phase transition previously found by us for the one-mode Dicke model with the rotating-wave approximation persists in the general multimode case.