Triangular and honeycomb lattices of cold atoms in optical cavities (original) (raw)

Cold atoms in cavity-generated dynamical optical potentials

Reviews of Modern Physics, 2013

We review state-of-the-art theory and experiment of the motion of cold and ultracold atoms coupled to the radiation field within a high-finesse optical resonator in the dispersive regime of the atom-field interaction with small internal excitation. The optical dipole force on the atoms together with the back-action of atomic motion onto the light field gives rise to a complex nonlinear coupled dynamics. As the resonator constitutes an open driven and damped system, the dynamics is non-conservative and in general enables cooling and confining the motion of polarizable particles. In addition the emitted cavity field allows for real-time monitoring of the particle's position with minimal perturbation up to sub-wavelength accuracy. For many-body systems, the resonator field mediates controllable long-range atom-atom interactions, which set the stage for collective phenomena. Besides correlated motion of distant particles, one finds critical behavior and non-equilibrium phase transitions between states of different atomic order in conjunction with superradiant light scattering. Quantum degenerate gases inside optical resonators can be used to emulate opto-mechanics as well as novel quantum phases like supersolids and spin glasses. Non-equilibrium quantum phase transitions as predicted by e.g. the Dicke Hamiltonian can be controlled and explored in real-time via monitoring the cavity field. In combination with optical lattices, the cavity field can be utilized for non-destructive probing Hubbard physics and tailoring long-range interactions for ultracold quantum systems.

Cold atoms in double-well optical lattices

Physical Review A, 2008

Cold atoms, loaded into an optical lattice with double-well sites, are considered. Pseudospin representation for an effective Hamiltonian is derived. The system in equilibrium displays two phases, ordered and disordered. The second-order phase transition between the phases can be driven either by temperature or by changing the system parameters. Collective pseudospin excitations have a gap disappearing at the phase-transition point. Dynamics of atoms is studied, when they are loaded into the lattice in an initially nonequilibrium state. It is shown that the temporal evolution of atoms, contrary to their equilibrium thermodynamics, cannot be described in the mean-field approximation, since it results in a structurally unstable dynamical system, but a more accurate description is necessary taking account of attenuation effects.

Nonlinear Excitations in Ultracold Atoms Trapped in Triple Optical Lattices

Condensed Matter

Various solitary wave excitations are found for a Bose-Einstein condensate in presence of two hybrid potentials in the form of triple mixtures of optical lattices. One of these potentials comprises of a combination of two important lattice profiles, such as frustrated optical lattice and double-well super-lattice, within one. Another represents a composite lattice combination, resulting in a wider and deeper frustrated optical lattice. The dynamical equation for such a system is solved by the exact analytical method to obtain a bright solitary wave, periodic wave and cnoidal wave excitations. We also report Anderson localization, bifurcation of condensate at the center and a competition between two different types of localizations upon trap engineering. Dynamical and structural stability analyses are also carried out, which reveal the obtained solutions as extremely stable for structural noise incorporation and sufficiently stable for dynamical stability. These triple mixtures of op...

Dimensional crossover in self-organised super-radiant phases of ultra cold atoms inside a cavity

2022

We consider a condensate of ultra cold bosonic atoms in a linear optical cavity illuminated by a two-pump configuration where each pump is making different angles with the direction of the cavity axis. We show such configuration allows a smooth transition from a one-dimensional quantum optical lattice configuration to a two-dimensional quantum optical lattice configuration induced by the cavity-atom interaction. Using a Holstein-Primakoff transformation, we find out the atomic density profile of such self-organised ground state in the super-radiant phase as a function of the angular orientations of the pump in such dynamical quantum optical lattice and show how the corresponding results can also be understood in terms of an Extended Bose-Hubbard model in such quantum optical lattice potential.

Cold atom dynamics in a quantum optical lattice potential

Physical review letters, 2005

We study a generalized cold atom Bose-Hubbard model, where the periodic optical potential is formed by a cavity field with quantum properties. On the one hand, the common coupling of all atoms to the same mode introduces cavity-mediated long-range atom-atom interactions, and, on the other hand, atomic backaction on the field introduces atom-field entanglement. This modifies the properties of the associated quantum phase transitions and allows for new correlated atom-field states, including superposition of different atomic quantum phases. After deriving an approximative Hamiltonian including the new long-range interaction terms, we exhibit central physical phenomena at generic configurations of few atoms in few wells. We find strong modifications of population fluctuations and next-nearest-neighbor correlations near the phase transition point.

Simulating quantum-optical phenomena with cold atoms in optical lattices

New Journal of Physics, 2011

We propose a scheme involving cold atoms trapped in optical lattices to observe different phenomena traditionally linked to quantum-optical systems. The basic idea consists of connecting the trapped atomic state to a non-trapped state through a Raman scheme. The coupling between these two types of atoms (trapped and free) turns out to be similar to that describing light-matter interaction within the rotating-wave approximation, the role of matter and photons being played by the trapped and free atoms, respectively. We explain in particular how to observe phenomena arising from the collective spontaneous emission of atomic and harmonic oscillator samples, such as superradiance and directional emission. We also show how the same setup can simulate Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonians with extended hopping as well as Ising models with long-range interactions. We believe that this system can be realized with state of the art technology.

Bright and dark excitons in an atom-pair–filled optical lattice within a cavity

EPL (Europhysics Letters), 2008

We study electronic excitations of a degenerate gas of atoms trapped in pairs in an optical lattice. Local dipole-dipole interactions produce a long lived antisymmetric and a short lived symmetric superposition of individual atomic excitations as the lowest internal on-site excitations. Due to the much larger dipole moment the symmetric states couple efficiently to neighbouring lattice sites and can be well represented by Frenkel excitons, while the antisymmetric dark states stay localized. Within a cavity only symmetric states couple to cavity photons inducing long range interactions to form polaritons. We calculate their dispersion curves as well as cavity transmission and reflection spectra to observe them. For a lattice with aspherical sites bright and dark states get mixed and their relative excitation energies depend on photon polarizations. The system should allow to study new types of solid state phenomena in atom filled optical lattices.

Opto-Mechanical Pattern Formation in Cold Atoms

2012

Transverse pattern formation in an optical cavity containing a cloud of cold two-level atoms is discussed. We show that density modulation becomes the dominant mechanism as the atomic temperature is reduced. Indeed, for low but achievable temperatures the internal degrees of freedom of the atoms can be neglected, and the system is well described by treating them as mobile dielectric particles. A linear stability analysis predicts the instability threshold and the spatial scale of the emergent pattern. Numerical simulations in one and two transverse dimensions confirm the instability and predict honeycomb and hexagonal density structures, respectively, for the blue and red detuned cases.

Fast Dynamics for Atoms in Optical Lattices

Physical Review Letters, 2013

Cold atoms in optical lattices allow for accurate studies of many body dynamics. Rapid timedependent modifications of optical lattice potentials may result in significant excitations in atomic systems. The dynamics in such a case is frequently quite incompletely described by standard applications of tight-binding models (such as e.g. Bose-Hubbard model or its extensions) that typically neglect the effect of the dynamics on the transformation between the real space and the tight-binding basis. We illustrate the importance of a proper quantum mechanical description using a multi-band extended Bose-Hubbard model with time-dependent Wannier functions. We apply it to situations, directly related to experiments. PACS numbers: 67.85.Hj, 03.75.Kk, 03.75.Lm