The spatial self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a high-finesse linear optical cavity is discussed. The condensate atoms are laser-driven from the side and scatter photons into the cavity. Above a critical pump intensity the homogeneous condensate evolves into a stable pattern bound by the cavity field. The transition point is determined analytically from a mean-field theory. We calculate the lowest lying Bogoliubov excitations of the coupled BEC-cavity system and the quantum depletion due to the atom-field coupling.
Cavity quantum electrodynamics (cavity QED) describes the coherent interaction between matter and an electromagnetic field confined within a resonator structure, and is providing a useful platform for developing concepts in quantum information processing. By using high-quality resonators, a strong coupling regime can be reached experimentally in which atoms coherently exchange a photon with a single light-field mode many times before dissipation sets in. This has led to fundamental studies with both microwave and optical resonators. To meet the challenges posed by quantum state engineering and quantum information processing, recent experiments have focused on laser cooling and trapping of atoms inside an optical cavity. However, the tremendous degree of control over atomic gases achieved with Bose-Einstein condensation has so far not been used for cavity QED. Here we achieve the strong coupling of a Bose-Einstein condensate to the quantized field of an ultrahigh-finesse optical cavity and present a measurement of its eigenenergy spectrum. This is a conceptually new regime of cavity QED, in which all atoms occupy a single mode of a matter-wave field and couple identically to the light field, sharing a single excitation. This opens possibilities ranging from quantum communication to a wealth of new phenomena that can be expected in the many-body physics of quantum gases with cavity-mediated interactions.
A Bose-Einstein condensate is dispersively coupled to a single mode of an ultra-high finesse optical cavity. The system is governed by strong interactions between the atomic motion and the light field even at the level of single quanta. While coherently pumping the cavity mode the condensate is subject to the cavity optical lattice potential whose depth depends nonlinearly on the atomic density distribution. We observe bistability already below the single photon level and strong back-action dynamics which tunes the system periodically out of resonance.
We present a general theory for calculating the damping rate of elementary density wave excitations in a Bose-Einstein condensate strongly coupled to a single radiation field mode of an optical cavity. Thereby we give a detailed derivation of the huge resonant enhancement in the Beliaev damping of a density wave mode, predicted recently by Konya et al., Phys.~Rev.~A 89, 051601(R) (2014). The given density-wave mode constitutes the polariton-like soft mode of the self-organization phase transition. The resonant enhancement takes place, both in the normal and ordered phases, outside the critical region. We show that the large damping rate is accompanied by a significant frequency shift of this polariton mode. Going beyond the Born-Markov approximation and determining the poles of the retarded Greens function of the polariton, we reveal a strong coupling between the polariton and a collective mode in the phonon bath formed by the other density wave modes.
Quantum fluctuations of a cavity field coupled into the motion of ultracold bosons can be strongly amplified by a mechanism analogous to the Petermann excess noise factor in lasers with unstable cavities. For a Bose-Einstein condensate in a stable optical resonator, the excess noise effect amounts to a significant depletion on long timescales.
We study quasiparticle scattering effects on the dynamics of a homogeneous Bose-Einstein condensate of ultracold atoms coupled to a single mode of an optical cavity. The relevant excitations, which are polariton-like mixed excitations of photonic and atomic density-wave modes, are identified. All the first-order correlation functions are presented by means of the Keldysh Greens function technique. Beyond confirming the existence of the resonant enhancement of Beliaev damping, we find a very structured spectrum of fluctuations. There is a spectral hole burning at half of the recoil frequency reflecting the singularity of the Beliaev scattering process. The effects of the photon-loss dissipation channel and that of the Beliaev damping due to atom-atom collisions can be well separated. We show that the Beliaev process does not influence the properties of the self-organization criticality.