Cold atoms in cavity-generated dynamical optical potentials

By Helmut Ritsch, Péter Domokos, Ferdinand Brennecke, Tilman Esslinger. 2012

713 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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.

Subfields: Artificial Intelligence, Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/72d24b71b2ec1d6e668446202f345588f7f1f158

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Citations in the corpus

Cluster mean-field approach to the steady-state phase diagram of dissipative spin systems (2016, background): “[15], cold atoms in cavities [16], and arrays of coupled QED cavities [17,18] are probably the most intensively investigated experimental platforms in relation to this aim.”
Quantum Simulation Of The Quantum Rabi Model In A Trapped Ion (2017, background): “The JCM is an analytically solvable model that has been studied in cavity quantum electrodynamics(CQED) [4– 6], atomic physics [7], quantum dots [8], circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) [9, 10] and trapped ions [11– 14], among other quantum platforms.”
Macroscopic quantum states: Measures, fragility, and implementations (2017, background): “Blatt and Wineland (2008); Leibfried et al. (2003); Ritsch et al. (2013) are more exhaustive reviews related to trapped ions and cold atoms respectively.”
Keldysh field theory for driven open quantum systems (2015, background): “This work is complemetary to excellent reviews putting more emphasis on the specific experimental platforms partially mentioned above: The physics of driven Bose-Einstein condensates in optical cavities is reviewed in [10].”
Quantum metrology with nonclassical states of atomic ensembles (2016, background): “Optical cavities can be used to effectively increase the optical depth of the atomic sample and represent a versatile system with rich possibilities for creating entanglement between atoms (Miller et al., 2005; Ritsch et al., 2013; Tanji-Suzuki et al., 2011).”
Tunable-range, photon-mediated atomic interactions in multimode cavity QED (2017, background): “A crucial limitation to exploring such physics using cavity QED stems from the fact that the single- or few-mode cavities employed so far admit photon-mediated interactions that are all to all in coupling [4].”
Quantum trajectories and open many-body quantum systems (2014, background): “Another system where dissipation is inherent in the most fundamental properties involves Bose-Einstein condensates in optical cavities [151, 334].”