Phase transition in a Dicke model with two-photon excitation

A. A. Bakasov

Xiang-You Chen, Yuyu Zhang

The Hamiltonian of the two-photon Dicke model is diagonalized for the normal phase and super-radiant phase beyond the mean-field method respectively, giving the critical coupling strength. Besides a spectral collapse, the super-radiant phase transition is presented by the vanishing of the excitation energy, which is lower than the mean-field results. Finite-size scaling exponents for the ground-state energy and the atomic angular momentum are analytically derived from scaling hypothesis, belonging to the same scaling universality of the one-photon Dicke model.

Florentin Reiter, Susanne F. Yelin

Xiang-You Chen, Yuyu Zhang

We perform a Schrieffer-Wolff transformation to the two-photon Dicke model by keeping the leading-order correction with a quartic term of the field, which is crucial for finite-size scaling analysis. Besides a spectral collapse as a consequence of two-photon interaction, the super-radiant phase transition is indicated by the vanishing of the excitation energy and the uniform atomic polarization. The scaling functions for the ground-state energy and the atomic pseudospin are derived analytically. The scaling exponents of the observables are the same as those in the standard Dicke model, indicating they are in the same universality class.

Anton Bölian, Phatthamon Kongkhambut, Christoph Georges +6 more

Approaching phase boundaries in many-body systems can give rise to intriguing signatures in their excitation spectra. Here, we explore the excitation spectrum of a Bose-Einstein condensate strongly coupled to an optical cavity and pumped by an optical standing wave, which simulates the famous Dicke-Hepp-Lieb phase transition of the open Dicke model with dissipation arising due to photon leakage from the cavity. For weak dissipation, the excitation spectrum displays two strongly polaritonic modes. Close to the phase boundary, we observe an intriguing regime where the lower energetic of these modes, instead of showing the expected roton-type mode softening, is found to approach and persist at zero energy, well before the critical pump strength for the Dicke-Hepp-Lieb transition boundary is reached. Hence, a peculiar situation arises, where an excitation is possible at zero energy cost, but nevertheless no instability of the system is created.