Cavity enhanced light scattering in optical lattices to probe atomic quantum statistics

Different quantum states of atoms in optical lattices can be nondestructively monitored by off-resonant collective light scattering into a cavity. Angle resolved measurements of photon number and variance give information about atom-number fluctuations and pair correlations without single-site access. Observation at angles of diffraction minima provides information on quantum fluctuations insensitive to classical noise. For transverse probing, no photon is scattered into a cavity from a Mott insulator phase, while the photon number is proportional to the atom number for a superfluid.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, to published in Phys. Rev. Lett. (March 2007

Light scattering from ultracold atoms in optical lattices as an optical probe of quantum statistics

We study off-resonant collective light scattering from ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice. Scattering from different atomic quantum states creates different quantum states of the scattered light, which can be distinguished by measurements of the spatial intensity distribution, quadrature variances, photon statistics, or spectral measurements. In particular, angle-resolved intensity measurements reflect global statistics of atoms (total number of radiating atoms) as well as local statistical quantities (single-site statistics even without an optical access to a single site) and pair correlations between different sites. As a striking example we consider scattering from transversally illuminated atoms into an optical cavity mode. For the Mott insulator state, similar to classical diffraction, the number of photons scattered into a cavity is zero due to destructive interference, while for the superfluid state it is nonzero and proportional to the number of atoms. Moreover, we demonstrate that light scattering into a standing-wave cavity has a nontrivial angle dependence, including the appearance of narrow features at angles, where classical diffraction predicts zero. The measurement procedure corresponds to the quantum non-demolition (QND) measurement of various atomic variables by observing light.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Atom state evolution and collapse in ultracold gases during light scattering into a cavity

We consider the light scattering from ultracold atoms trapped in an optical lattice inside a cavity. In such a system, both the light and atomic motion should be treated in a fully quantum mechanical way. The unitary evolution of the light-matter quantum state is shown to demonstrate the non-trivial phase dependence, quadratic in the atom number. This is essentially due to the dynamical self-consistent nature of the light modes assumed in our model. The collapse of the quantum state during the photocounting process is analyzed as well. It corresponds to the measurement-induced atom number squeezing. We show that, at the final stage of the state collapse, the shrinking of the width of the atom number distribution behaves exponentially in time. This is much faster than the square root time dependence, obtained for the initial stage of the state collapse. The exponentially fast squeezing appears due to the discrete nature of the atom number distribution.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Bond Order via Light-Induced Synthetic Many-body Interactions of Ultracold Atoms in Optical Lattices

We show how bond order emerges due to light mediated synthetic interactions in ultracold atoms in optical lattices in an optical cavity. This is a consequence of the competition between both short- and long-range interactions designed by choosing the optical geometry. Light induces effective many-body interactions that modify the landscape of quantum phases supported by the typical Bose-Hubbard model. Using exact diagonalization of small system sizes in one dimension, we present the many-body quantum phases the system can support via the interplay between the density and bond (or matter-wave coherence) interactions. We find numerical evidence to support that dimer phases due to bond order are analogous to valence bond states. Different possibilities of light-induced atomic interactions are considered that go beyond the typical atomic system with dipolar and other intrinsic interactions. This will broaden the Hamiltonian toolbox available for quantum simulation of condensed matter physics via atomic systems.Comment: Accepted in New Journal of Physic

Non-Hermitian Dynamics in the Quantum Zeno Limit

Measurement is one of the most counter-intuitive aspects of quantum physics. Frequent measurements of a quantum system lead to quantum Zeno dynamics where time evolution becomes confined to a subspace defined by the projections. However, weak measurement performed at a finite rate is also capable of locking the system into such a Zeno subspace in an unconventional way: by Raman-like transitions via virtual intermediate states outside this subspace, which are not forbidden. Here, we extend this concept into the realm of non-Hermitian dynamics by showing that the stochastic competition between measurement and a system's own dynamics can be described by a non-Hermitian Hamiltonian. We obtain an analytic solution for ultracold bosons in a lattice and show that a dark state of the tunnelling operator is a steady state in which the observable's fluctuations are zero and tunnelling is suppressed by destructive matter-wave interference. This opens a new venue of investigation beyond the canonical quantum Zeno dynamics and leads to a new paradigm of competition between global measurement backaction and short-range atomic dynamics.Comment: Accepted in Phys. Rev.

Incoherent quantum feedback control of collective light scattering by Bose-Einstein condensates

It is well known that in the presence of a ring cavity the light scattering from a uniform atomic ensemble can become unstable resulting in the collective atomic recoil lasing. This is the result of a positive feedback due to the cavity. We propose to add an additional electronic feedback loop based on the photodetection of the scattered light. The advantage is a great flexibility in choosing the feedback algorithm, since manipulations with electric signals are very well developed. In this paper we address the application of such a feedback to atoms in the Bose-Einstein condensed state and explore the quantum noise due to the incoherent feedback action. We show that although the feedback based on the photodetection does not change the local stability of the initial uniform distribution with respect to small disturbances, it reduces the region of attraction of the uniform equilibrium. The feedback-induced nonlinearity enables quantum fluctuations to bring the system out of the stability region and cause an exponential growth even if the uniform state is globally stable without the feedback. Using numerical solution of the feedback master equation we show that there is no feedback-induced noise in the quadratures of the excited atomic and light modes. The feedback loop, however, introduces additional noise into the number of quanta of these modes. Importantly, the feedback opens an opportunity to position the modulated BEC inside a cavity as well as tune the phase of scattered light. This can find applications in precision measurements and quantum simulations.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure

Quantum Optics with Quantum Gases

Quantum optics with quantum gases represents a new field, where the quantum nature of both light and ultracold matter plays equally important role. Only very recently this ultimate quantum limit of light-matter interaction became feasible experimentally. In traditional quantum optics, the cold atoms are considered classically, whereas, in quantum atom optics, the light is used as an essentially classical axillary tool. On the one hand, the quantization of optical trapping potentials can significantly modify many-body dynamics of atoms, which is well-known only for classical potentials. On the other hand, atomic fluctuations can modify the properties of the scattered light.Comment: to be published in Laser Physics (2009