Lasing and high temperature phase transitions in atomic systems with dressed state polaritons

We consider the fundamental problem of high temperature phase transitions in the system of high density two-level atoms off-resonantly interacting with a pump field in the presence of optical collisions (OCs) and placed in the cavity. OCs are considered in the framework of thermalization of atomic dressed state (DS) population. For the case of a strong atom-field coupling condition we analyze the problem of thermodynamically equilibrium superradiant phase transition for the order parameter representing a real amplitude of cavity mode and taking place as a result of atomic DSs thermalization process. Such transition is also connected with condensed (coherent) properties of low branch (LB) DS-polaritons occurring in the cavity. For describing non-equilibrium phase transitions we derive Maxwell-Bloch like equations which account for cavity decay rate, collisional decay rate and spontaneous emission. Various aspects of transitions to laser field formation by using atomic DS levels for both positive and negative detuning of a pump field from atomic transition frequency are studied in detail. It is revealed, that for positive atom-light detuning DS lasing can be obtained in the presence of quasi-equilibrium DS population that corresponds to a true two-level atomic system with the inversion in nonresonant limit.

Bose-Einstein condensation for trapped atomic polaritons in a biconical waveguide cavity

We study the problem of high temperature Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) of atom-light polaritons in a waveguide cavity appearing due to interaction of two-level atoms with (non-resonant) quantized optical radiation, in the strong coupling regime, in the presence of optical collisions (OCs) with buffer gas particles. Specifically, we propose a special biconical waveguide cavity (BWC), permitting localization and trapping of low branch (LB) polaritons imposed by the variation of the waveguide radius in longitudinal direction. We have shown that critical temperature of BEC occurring in the system can be high enough -- few hundred Kelvins; it is connected with photon-like character of LB polaritons and strongly depends on waveguide cavity parameters. In the case of a linear trapping potential we obtain an Airy-shaped polariton condensate wave function which, when disturbed out of equilibrium, exhibits small amplitude oscillations with the characteristic period in the picosecond domain.