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Physical Review Letters

Collective Cooling and Self-Organization of Atoms in a Cavity

P. Domokos, Helmut Ritsch

Published Dec 5, 2002• 396 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the correlated dynamics of N coherently driven atoms coupled to a standing-wave cavity mode. For red detuning between the driving field and the cavity as well as the atomic resonance frequencies, we predict a light force induced self-organization of the atoms into one of two possible regular patterns, which maximize the cooperative scattering of light into the cavity field. Kinetic energy is extracted from the atoms by superradiant light scattering to reach a final kinetic energy related to the cavity linewidth. The self-organization starts only above a threshold of the pump strength and atom number. We find a quadratic dependence of the cavity mode intensity on the atom number, which demonstrates the cooperative effect.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.89.253003

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We theoretically investigate the correlated dynamics of N coherently driven atoms coupled to a standing-wave cavity mode. For red detuning between the driving field and the cavity as well as the atomic resonance frequencies, we predict a light force induced self-organization of the atoms into one of two possible regular patterns, which maximize the cooperative scattering of light into the cavity field. Kinetic energy is extracted from the atoms by superradiant light scattering to reach a final kinetic energy related to the cavity linewidth. The self-organization starts only above a threshold of the pump strength and atom number. We find a quadratic dependence of the cavity mode intensity on the atom number, which demonstrates the cooperative effect.
Pattern formation of atoms in high-finesse optical resonators results from the mechanical forces of light associated with superradiant scattering into the cavity mode. It occurs when the laser intensity exceeds a threshold value such that the pumping processes counteract the losses. We consider atoms driven by a laser and coupling with a mode of a standing-wave cavity and describe their dynamics with a Fokker-Planck equation, in which the atomic motion is semiclassical but the cavity field is a full quantum variable. The asymptotic state of the atoms is a thermal state, whose temperature is solely controlled by the detuning between the laser and the cavity frequency and by the cavity loss rate. From this result we derive the free energy and show that in the thermodynamic limit self-organization is a second-order phase transition. The order parameter is the field inside the resonator to which one can associate a magnetization in analogy to ferromagnetism, the control field is the laser intensity, but the steady state is intrinsically out of equilibrium. In the symmetry-broken phase, quantum noise induces jumps of the spatial density between two ordered patterns: We characterize the statistical properties of this temporal behavior at steady state and show that the thermodynamic properties of the system can be extracted by detecting the light at the cavity output. The results of our analysis are in full agreement with previous studies; we extend them by deriving a self-consistent theory which is valid also when the cavity field is in the shot-noise limit and elucidate the nature of the self-organization transition.
Active atomic clocks are predicted to provide far better short-term stability and robustness against thermal fluctuations than typical feedback-based optical atomic clocks. However, continuous laser operation using an ensemble of clock atoms still remains an experimentally challenging task. We study spatial self-organization in a transversely driven ensemble of clock atoms inside an optical resonator and coherent light emission from the cavity. We focus on the spectral properties of the emitted light in the narrow atomic linewidth regime, where the phase coherence providing frequency stability is stored in the atomic dipoles rather than the cavity field. The atoms are off-resonantly driven by a standing-wave coherent laser transversely to the cavity axis, allowing for atomic motion along the cavity axis as well as along the pump. In order to treat larger atom numbers we employ a second-order cumulant expansion which allows us to calculate the spectrum of the cavity light field. We identify the self-organization threshold where the atoms align themselves in a checkerboard pattern, thus maximizing light scattering into the cavity, which simultaneously induces cooling. For a larger driving intensity, more atoms are transferred to the excited state, reducing cooling but increasing light emission from the excited atoms. This can be enhanced via a second cavity mode at the atomic frequency spatially shifted by a quarter wavelength. For large enough atom numbers we observe laser-like emission close to the bare atomic transition frequency.
We study the quantum dynamics of an array of coherently driven two-level atoms coupled to an optical resonator. In the strong coupling regime the cavity field generated by atomic scattering interferes destructively with the pump on the atoms. In this configuration atomic excitation is suppressed even for strong driving fields, while the stationary intracavity field amplitude is almost independent of the atom number. The magnitude of this interference effect depends on the detuning between laser and cavity field and on the relative atomic positions and is strongest when the atoms are ordered in a wavelength spaced lattice placed at the antinodes of the cavity mode. In this case three dimensional intensity minima are created in the vicinity of each atom. We analyze the mechanical forces in the regime where the interference condition is fulfilled, and show that the atomic pattern is mechanically stable whenever the driving frequency is red detuned with respect to the cavity frequency, irrespective of the atomic transition frequency
We present a detailed study of the spatial self-organization of laser-driven atoms in an optical cavity, an effect predicted on the basis of numerical simulations [P. Domokos and H. Ritsch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 253003 (2002)] and observed experimentally [A. T. Black et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 203001 (2003)]. Above a threshold in the driving laser intensity, from a uniform distribution the atoms evolve into one of two stable patterns that produce superradiant scattering into the cavity. We derive analytic formulas for the threshold and critical exponent of this phase transition from a mean-field approach. Numerical simulations of the microscopic dynamics reveal that, on a laboratory time scale, a hysteresis masks the mean-field behavior. Simple physical arguments explain this phenomenon and provide analytical expressions for the observable threshold. Above a certain density of the atoms a limited number of ``defects'' appear in the organized phase and influence the statistical properties of the system. The scaling of the cavity cooling mechanism and the phase-space density with the atom number is also studied.
We study a transversely pumped atomic Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a single-mode optical cavity, where effective atom-atom interactions are mediated by pump and cavity photons. A number of experiments and theoretical works have shown the formation of a superradiant state in this setup, where interference of pump and cavity light leads to an optical lattice in which atoms self-consistently organize. This self-organization has been extensively studied using the approximate Dicke model (truncating to two momentum states), as well as through numerical Gross-Pitaevskii simulations in one and two dimensions. Here, we perform a full mean-field analysis of the system, including all relevant atomic momentum states and the cavity field. We map out the steady-state phase diagram vs pump strength and cavity detuning, and provide an in-depth understanding of the instabilities that are linked to the emergence of spatiotemporal patterns. We find and describe parameter regimes where the mean field predicts bistability, regimes where the dynamics form chaotic trajectories, instabilities caused by resonances between normal mode excitations, and states with atomic dynamics but vanishing cavity field.
We review the modifications and implications of the effect of light forces on atoms when the field is enclosed in an optical resonator of high finesse. The systems considered range from a single atom strongly coupled to a single mode of a high-Q microcavity to a large ensemble of atoms in a highly degenerate quasi-confocal resonator. We set up general models that allow us to obtain analytic expressions for the optical potential, friction, and diffusion. In the bad-cavity limit the modified cooling properties can be attributed to the spectral modifications of light absorption and spontaneous emission in a form of generalized and enhanced Doppler cooling. For the strong coupling regime in a good cavity, we identify the dynamical coupling between the light field intensity and the atomic motion as the central mechanism underlying the cavity-induced cooling. The dynamical cavity cooling, which does not rely on spontaneous emission, can be enhanced by multimode cavity geometries because of the effect of coherent photon redistribution between different modes. The model is then generalized to include several distinct frequencies to account for more general trap geometries. Finally we show that the field-induced buildup of correlations between the motion of different particles plays a central role in the scaling behavior of the system. Depending on the geometry and parameters, its effect ranges from strong destructive interference, slowing down the cooling process, to self-organized crystallization, implying atomic self-trapping and faster cooling to lower temperatures by cooperative coherent scattering.