Probing the dynamics of two dimensional superfluids with cavity optomechanics.

K. Zhang, W. Chen, Pierre Meystre

N. Pradhan, Rina Kanamoto, Mishkatul Bhattacharya +1 more

The Andreev-Bashkin (AB) effect, corresponding to the dissipationless dragging of one superfluid by another, was predicted in the early 1970s but has so far eluded experimental detection. In this work, we theoretically introduce a detection paradigm and show that it enables the observation of the hitherto undetected AB effect for realistic parameters. We accomplish this by using the powerful techniques of cavity optomechanics, which were crucial to the observation of gravitational waves, on a spinor ring Bose-Einstein condensate. In contrast to established AB detection methods, our scheme allows for real-time, , minimally destructive and three orders-of-magnitude-more-sensitive measurement of the AB effect. Our proposal, which considers persistent currents in weakly repulsive atomic condensates and amplifies the AB signal using a dynamic Bragg spectroscopy technique, is supported by numerical simulations of the stochastic Gross-Pitaevski equation, which agree very well with our analytic Bogoliubov–de Gennes calculations. Our work suggests a tool for sensitively and nondestructively probing the dynamics of rotationally interacting superfluids using cavities and has fundamental implications for ongoing studies of superfluid hydrodynamics, atomtronics, matter-wave interferometry, and cavity optomechanical sensing.

Nathaniel Brahms, Daniel W. C. Brooks, Sydney Schreppler +2 more

Stefan Forstner

The field of cavity optomechanics is based on the coupling of optical cavities to mechanical degrees of freedom. Over the past two decades, it has led to remarkable and surprising discoveries. A cavity optomechanical system enabled the first observation of gravitational waves, a discovery awarded with the 2017 Nobel prize, confirming Einstein's 100-year-old prediction. It was also a cavity optomechanical system that has for the first time enabled ground state cooling of the motion of an object containing ~1012 atoms, and entanglement of mechanical oscillators of similar size. Moreover, cavity optomechanical systems have facilitated significant progress in precision-sensing technologies, with diverse applications such as biosensing, magnetometry, and many more.But this may only be the beginning. The field is still in its early days and experimental capabilities are improving fast. For instance, cavity optomechanical systems have the potential to test predicted signatures of quantum gravity such as modifications to the canonical commutator, short-distance modifications to Newtonian gravity, dark matter and dark energy, and even extra dimensions. In this sense, they form an economical platform with a short experimental turnover time, that can compete in its predictive power with mega-scale, multi-billion-dollar experiments such as the Large Hadron Collider.This thesis is dedicated to utilizing cavity optomechanics to explore the maybe most challenging and unexplored frontier in quantum mechanics: The dynamics of macroscopic quantum systems. Quantum physics, since its discovery in the early 20th century, has revolutionized our understanding of the microworld, but has long been thought to apply exclusively to extremely small objects. However, over the past decades, ever-larger quantum systems have emerged in laboratories around the world. On one hand, these are collective, macroscopic quantum phenomena such as superfluidity, superconductivity, and Bose-Einstein condensation. On the other hand, they are quantum states of relatively massive mechanical objects. While our understanding of the interplay of quantum mechanical and classical systems has greatly improved over the past decades, as described by theories of decoherence and open quantum systems, many basic questions about macroscopic quantum systems still remain unanswered. Quantum fluids such as Bose-Einstein condensates and superfluid helium are inherently hard to understand due to their complex dynamics, and difficult to probe experimentally due to the weakness of their interactions with the environment and their fragile nature. This is especially true in the strongly-interacting regime, which is, for instance, found in superfluid helium.Another long-standing, unanswered set of questions in quantum mechanics is related to the quantum measurement problem. What constitutes a quantum measurement? What happens if we engineer a quantum state that is large enough to be, in principle, part of our everyday world? What if we attempt to create a quantum superposition of a living being? Do the laws of physics even permit either of these scenarios?Cavity optomechanics is a unique and powerful platform to investigate macroscopic quantum systems. The extreme sensitivity of cavity optomechanical sensors in readout of mechanical motion makes them susceptible to minute quantum effects. The strong coupling between single photons and phonons in these systems allows engineering and measurement of quantum states of mechanical systems. Furthermore, most cavity optomechanical experiments are cryo-compatible and small in size, which allows integration with other quantum systems to be analyzed, such as superfluid helium.

Wenzhou Chen

This dissertation contains a study of ultracold atoms in optical cavities. We particularly focus on two aspects of the coupled atom-cavity systems. In the first aspect, we implement the quantum nature of the light field to probe the quantum state of the atoms. This is interesting due to the nondestructive nature of the characterization of many-body atomic states. In the second aspect we study the cavity optomechanics that investigates the coupling of mechanical and optical degrees of freedom via radiation pressure. The optomechanical cavity provides an interesting nonlinear system to study the coupling between atoms and the intracavity field.In the context of cavity quantum electrodynamics we study the reflection of two counter-propagating modes of the light field in a high-Q ring cavity by ultracold atoms either in the Mott insulator state or in the superfluid state of an optical lattice. We find that the dynamics of the reflected light strongly depends on both the lattice spacing and the state of the matter-wave field. By using the Monte Carlo wave-function method to account for the cavity damping we also determine the two-time correlation function and the time-dependent physical spectrum of theretroreflected field. We find that the light field and the atoms become entangled if the latter are in a superfluid state. We also analyze quantitatively the entanglement between the atoms and the light.In cavity optomechanics the mechanical effect can either comes from a vibrating macroscopic oscillator or a collective density excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate. First we use a Fabry-Perot-type cavity to study the opto-mechanically-induced bistable quantum phase transitions between superfluid and a Mott insulator states of an ultracold bosonic gases trapped inside the cavity. Secondly, we study the symmetricand antisymmetric collective density side modes of the BEC which results from the optomechanical effects of the light fields in a ring cavity.

Wei Wang, L. C. Wang, Hongchang Sun