No Arabic abstract
The light-matter interaction can be utilized to qualitatively alter physical properties of materials. Recent theoretical and experimental studies have explored this possibility of controlling matter by light based on driving many-body systems via strong classical electromagnetic radiation, leading to a time-dependent Hamiltonian for electronic or lattice degrees of freedom. To avoid inevitable heating, pump-probe setups with ultrashort laser pulses have so far been used to study transient light-induced modifications in materials. Here, we pursue yet another direction of controlling quantum matter by modifying quantum fluctuations of its electromagnetic environment. In contrast to earlier proposals on light-enhanced electron-electron interactions, we consider a dipolar quantum many-body system embedded in a cavity composed of metal mirrors, and formulate a theoretical framework to manipulate its equilibrium properties on the basis of quantum light-matter interaction. We analyze hybridization of different types of the fundamental excitations, including dipolar phonons, cavity photons, and plasmons in metal mirrors, arising from the cavity confinement in the regime of strong light-matter interaction. This hybridization qualitatively alters the nature of the collective excitations and can be used to selectively control energy-level structures in a wide range of platforms. Most notably, in quantum paraelectrics, we show that the cavity-induced softening of infrared optical phonons enhances the ferroelectric phase in comparison with the bulk materials. Our findings suggest an intriguing possibility of inducing a superradiant-type transition via the light-matter coupling without external pumping. We also discuss possible applications of the cavity-induced modifications in collective excitations to molecular materials and excitonic devices.
We study the laser control of magnon topological phases induced by the Aharonov-Casher effect in insulating antiferromagnets (AFs). Since the laser electric field can be considered as a time-periodic perturbation, we apply the Floquet theory and perform the inverse frequency expansion by focusing on the high frequency region. Using the obtained effective Floquet Hamiltonian, we study nonequilibrium magnon dynamics away from the adiabatic limit and its effect on topological phenomena. We show that a linearly polarized laser can generate helical edge magnon states and induce the magnonic spin Nernst effect, whereas a circularly polarized laser can generate chiral edge magnon states and induce the magnonic thermal Hall effect. In particular, in the latter, we find that the direction of the magnon chiral edge modes and the resulting thermal Hall effect can be controlled by the chirality of the circularly polarized laser through the change from the left-circular to the right-circular polarization. Our results thus provide a handle to control and design magnon topological properties in the insulating AF.
Non-Hermiticity can vary the topology of system, induce topological phase transition, and even invalidate the conventional bulk-boundary correspondence. Here, we show the introducing of non-Hermiticity without affecting the topological properties of the original chiral symmetric Hermitian systems. Conventional bulk-boundary correspondence holds, topological phase transition and the (non)existence of edge states are unchanged even though the energy bands are inseparable due to non-Hermitian phase transition. Chern number for energy bands of the generalized non-Hermitian system in two dimension is proved to be unchanged and favorably coincides with the simulated topological charge pumping. Our findings provide insights into the interplay between non-Hermiticity and topology. Topological phase transition independent of non-Hermitian phase transition is a unique feature that beneficial for future applications of non-Hermitian topological materials.
We show that exciton-type transport in certain materials can be dramatically modified by their inclusion in an optical cavity: the modification of the electromagnetic vacuum mode structure introduced by the cavity leads to transport via delocalized polariton modes rather than through tunneling processes in the material itself. This can help overcome exponential suppression of transmission properties as a function of the system size in the case of disorder and other imperfections. We exemplify massive improvement of transmission for excitonic wave-packets through a cavity, as well as enhancement of steady-state exciton currents under incoherent pumping. These results may have implications for experiments of exciton transport in disordered organic materials. We propose that the basic phenomena can be observed in quantum simulators made of Rydberg atoms, cold molecules in optical lattices, as well as in experiments with trapped ions.
Microscopic imaging of local magnetic fields provides a window into the organizing principles of complex and technologically relevant condensed matter materials. However, a wide variety of intriguing strongly correlated and topologically nontrivial materials exhibit poorly understood phenomena outside the detection capability of state-of-the-art high-sensitivity, high-resolution scanning probe magnetometers. We introduce a quantum-noise-limited scanning probe magnetometer that can operate from room to cryogenic temperatures with unprecedented DC-field sensitivity and micron-scale resolution. The Scanning Quantum Cryogenic Atom Microscope (SQCRAMscope) employs a magnetically levitated atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), thereby providing immunity to conductive and blackbody radiative heating. It has a field sensitivity of 1.4 nT per resolution-limited point ($sim$2 $mu$m), or 6 nT/$sqrt{text{Hz}}$ per point at its duty cycle. Compared to point-by-point sensors, the long length of the BEC provides a naturally parallel measurement, allowing one to measure nearly one-hundred points with an effective field sensitivity of 600 pT$/sqrt{text{Hz}}$ for each point during the same time as a point-by-point scanner would measure these points sequentially. Moreover, it has a noise floor of 300 pT and provides nearly two orders of magnitude improvement in magnetic flux sensitivity (down to $10^{-6}$ $Phi_0/sqrt{text{Hz}}$) over previous atomic probe magnetometers capable of scanning near samples. These capabilities are, for the first time, carefully benchmarked by imaging magnetic fields arising from microfabricated wire patterns, in a system where samples may be scanned, cryogenically cooled, and easily exchanged. The SQCRAMscope will provide charge transport images at temperatures from room to 4 K in unconventional superconductors and topologically nontrivial materials.
The Kibble-Zurek mechanism constitutes one of the most fascinating and universal phenomena in the physics of critical systems. It describes the formation of domains and the spontaneous nucleation of topological defects when a system is driven across a phase transition exhibiting spontaneous symmetry breaking. While a characteristic dependence of the defect density on the speed at which the transition is crossed was observed in a vast range of equilibrium condensed matter systems, its extension to intrinsically driven-dissipative systems is a matter of ongoing research. In this work we numerically confirm the Kibble-Zurek mechanism in a paradigmatic family of driven-dissipative quantum systems, namely exciton-polaritons in microcavities. Our findings show how the concepts of universality and critical dynamics extend to driven-dissipative systems that do not conserve energy or particle number nor satisfy a detailed balance condition.