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Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics

Superfluid–Mott insulator quantum phase transition in hybrid cavity optomechanical arrays

Jin-Lou Ma, Lei Tan, Qing Li, Huai-Qiang Gu, Wu-Ming Liu

Published Jul 13, 2020• 5 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Abstract A two-dimensional hybrid cavity optomechanical array formed by an optomechanical cavity embedded with a two-level atom in each site is introduced to discuss the superfluid–Mott insulator quantum phase transition of light. On account of the optomechanical coupling effects stemmed from the coupled movable oscillator, the energy spectrum of the system changes, and an effective on-site repulsive interaction is reformed by modulating the optomechanically controlled parameters. By adjusting the detuning, an intersection between different critical chemical potentials can be found together with a disappearance of certain Mott lobes physically. The pronounced optomechanical coupling strength is in favor of the Mott insulator phase due to the enhanced effective on-site interactions. Additionally, the Kerr-nonlinearity reduces the average excitation of the high Mott insulator state and diminishes the superfluid regime. The results obtained here provide a novel image for characterizing the quantum phase transitions in optomechanical array systems, which will offer valuable insight for quantum simulations.

DOI
10.1088/1361-6455/aba582

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Abstract A two-dimensional hybrid cavity optomechanical array formed by an optomechanical cavity embedded with a two-level atom in each site is introduced to discuss the superfluid–Mott insulator quantum phase transition of light. On account of the optomechanical coupling effects stemmed from the coupled movable oscillator, the energy spectrum of the system changes, and an effective on-site repulsive interaction is reformed by modulating the optomechanically controlled parameters. By adjusting the detuning, an intersection between different critical chemical potentials can be found together with a disappearance of certain Mott lobes physically. The pronounced optomechanical coupling strength is in favor of the Mott insulator phase due to the enhanced effective on-site interactions. Additionally, the Kerr-nonlinearity reduces the average excitation of the high Mott insulator state and diminishes the superfluid regime. The results obtained here provide a novel image for characterizing the quantum phase transitions in optomechanical array systems, which will offer valuable insight for quantum simulations.
The emerging hybrid cavity optomagnonic system is a very promising quantum information processing platform for its strong or ultrastrong photon-magnon interaction on the scale of micrometers in the experiment. In this paper, the superfluid--Mott-insulator quantum phase transition in a two-dimensional cavity optomagnonic array system has been studied based on this characteristic. The analytical solution of the critical hopping rate is obtained by the mean-field approach, second-order perturbation theory, and Landau second-order phase transition theory. The numerical results show that the increasing coupling strength and the positive detunings of the photon and the magnon favor the coherence and then the stable areas of Mott lobes are compressed correspondingly. Moreover, the analytical results agree with the numerical ones when the total excitation number is lower. Finally, an effective repulsive potential is constructed to exhibit the corresponding mechanism. The results obtained here provide an experimentally feasible scheme for characterizing the quantum phase transitions in a cavity optomagnonic array system, which will offer valuable insight for quantum simulations.
Abstract The superfluid-Mott insulator and ergodic-many body localization transitions based on a two dimension nonlinear cavity optomagnonic system are investigated, where a yttrium iron garnet (YIG) sphere is embedded at each site of a two-dimensional coupled cavity array. We demonstrate that introducing phonon-photon coupling enhances the system’s coherence in the presence of the YIG sphere’s Kerr nonlinearity. In contrast, the photonic Kerr nonlinearity more effectively stabilizes the Mott insulating phase than the magnonic nonlinearity. The underlying physical mechanism is clarified by calculating the system’s effective repulsive potential. For the ergodic–many body localization transition, we find that increasing the disorder strength drives the system from the ergodic to the many-body localized phase, while a higher chemical potential enlarges the ergodic region. This work provides a unified framework for characterizing quantum phase transitions in cavity optomagnonic systems and offers an experimentally feasible route for their realization, paving the way for exploring complex many-body phenomena in hybrid quantum platforms.
We study the many-body state of ultracold bosons in a bistable optical lattice potential in an optomechanical resonator in the weak-coupling limit. Interesting physics arises as a result of bistability and discontinuous jumps in the cavity field. Of particular interest is the situation where the optical cavity is engineered so that a single input beam can result in two radically different stable ground states for the intracavity gas: superfluid and Mott insulator. Furthermore, the system we describe can be used as an adjustable template for investigating the coupling between cavity fields, nanomechanical systems operating in the quantum regime, and ultracold atomic gases.
Summary form only given. The studies of insulator to superfluid transitions in many body systems and their realization in optical lattices have opened great possibilities for simulating many body systems. It is thus interesting to explore which other systems permit such phases and simulations, especially if the problem of accessibility of the individual sites is not present. Particularly arresting will be to find such phases in a system of photons which, by being non-interacting, are unlikely candidates for the studies of many-body phenomena. Here we show that a Mott phase can arise in an array of coupled high Q electromagnetic cavities between which photons can hop, when each cavity is coupled to a single two level system (atom/quantum dot/Cooper pair). In this phase each atom-cavity system has the same integral number of polaritonic (atomic plus photonic) excitations. It occurs for resonant photonic and atomic frequencies when photon blockade provides an effective repulsion between the excitations in each atom-cavity system. Detuning the atomic and photonic frequencies suppresses this repulsion and induces a transition from the Mott phase to a photonic superfluid. We also show that for zero detuning, the system can simulate the dynamics of a spin chain with arbitrary number of excitations and can be used to implement quantum information processing tasks.
In this paper we construct a type of cavity array, in each cavity of which multiple two-level atoms interact with two independent photon modes. This system can be totally governed by a two-mode Dicke-lattice model, which includes all of the counter-rotating terms and therefore works well in the ultrastrong coupling regime achieved in recent experiments. Attributed to its special atom-photon coupling scheme, this model supports a global conserved excitation and a continuous U(1) symmetry, rather than the discrete Z2{Z}_{2}Z2​ symmetry in the standard single-mode Dicke-lattice model. This distinct change of symmetry via adding an extra photon mode strongly impacts the nature of photon localization and delocalization behavior. Specifically, the atom-photon interaction features stable Mott-lobe structures of photons and a second-order superfluid--Mott-insulator quantum phase transition, which share similarities with the Jaynes-Cummings-lattice and Bose-Hubbard models. More interestingly, the Mott-lobe structures predicted here depend crucially on the atom number of each site. We also show that our model can be mapped into a continuous XXXXXX spin model. Finally, we propose a scheme to implement the introduced cavity array in circuit quantum electrodynamics. This work broadens our understanding of strongly correlated photons.
We study the quantum phase transition between superfluid and Mott-insulator states for ultracold bosons with two internal states forming two bands of an optical lattice. The two atomic states are resonantly coupled by a coherent field enclosed in a single cavity mode, which mediates transitions between the two bosonic particle modes via absorption or emission of cavity photons. As nonlocal atomic coherence can build up via photon assisted tunneling, this coupling shifts the transition to the Mott-insulator phase toward deeper lattice potentials and stronger on-site interaction. Varying the intra and interband on-site interactions leads to several different atomic phase configurations. There are even parameter regions, where a mean-field approach predicts concurrence of a Mott-insulator state in one band and a superfluid in the other band.