Emergent and broken symmetries of atomic self-organization arising from Gouy phase shifts in multimode cavity QED
Abstract
Optical cavities can induce photon-mediated interactions among intracavity-trapped atoms. Multimode cavities provide the ability to tune the form of these interactions, e.g., by inducing a nonlocal sign-changing term to the interaction. By accounting for the Gouy phase shifts of the modes in a nearly degenerate, confocal, Fabry-Pérot cavity, we provide a theoretical description of this interaction, along with additional experimental confirmation to complement that presented in the companion paper [Y. Guo et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 122, 193601 (2019)]. Furthermore, we show that this interaction should be written in terms of a complex order parameter, allowing for a U(1) symmetry to emerge. This symmetry corresponds to the phase of the atomic density wave arising from self-organization when the cavity is transversely pumped above a critical threshold power. We show theoretically and experimentally how this phase depends on the position of the Bose-Einstein condensate within the cavity and discuss mechanisms that break the U(1) symmetry and lock this phase. We then consider alternative Fabry-Pérot multimode cavity geometries (i.e., beyond the confocal) and schemes with more than one pump laser and show that these provide additional capabilities for tuning the cavity-meditated interaction among atoms, including the ability to restore the U(1) symmetry despite the presence of symmetry-breaking effects. These photon-mediated interactions may be exploited for realizing quantum liquid crystalline states and spin glasses using multimode optical cavities.
Citation
Guo , Y , Vaidya , V D , Kroeze , R M , Lunney , R A , Lev , B L & Keeling , J 2019 , ' Emergent and broken symmetries of atomic self-organization arising from Gouy phase shifts in multimode cavity QED ' , Physical Review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics , vol. 99 , no. 5 , 053818 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.99.053818
Publication
Physical Review. A, Atomic, molecular, and optical physics
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1050-2947Type
Journal article
Description
Funding: Army Research Office, the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CCF-1640075, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation under Grant No. 2016-EP-2693-C. J. K. acknowledges support from SU2P.Collections
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