Optomechanics with molecules in a strongly pumped ring cavity

Cavity cooling of an atom works best on a cyclic optical transition in the strong coupling regime near resonance, where small cavity photon numbers suffice for trapping and cooling. Due to the absence of closed transitions a straightforward application to molecules fails: optical pumping can lead the particle into uncoupled states. An alternative operation in the far off-resonant regime generates only very slow cooling due to the reduced field-molecule coupling. We predict to overcome this by using a strongly driven ring-cavity operated in the sideband cooling regime. As in the optomechanical setups one takes advantage of a collectively enhanced field-molecule coupling strength using a large photon number. A linearized analytical treatment confirmed by full numerical quantum simulations predicts fast cooling despite the off-resonant small single molecule - single photon coupling. Even ground state cooling can be obtained by tuning the cavity field close to the Anti-stokes sideband for sufficiently high trapping frequency. Numerical simulations show quantum jumps of the molecules between the lowest two trapping levels, which can be be directly and continuously monitored via scattered light intensity detection

Observation of decoherence with a movable mirror

Recently it has been proposed to use parity as a measure of the mechanism behind decoherence or the transformation from quantum to classical. Here, we show that the proposed experiment is more feasible than previously thought, as even an initial thermal state would exhibit the hypothesized symmetry breaking.Comment: Proceedings of the Lake Garda "quantum puzzles" conferenc

Exciton-Polariton scattering for defect detection in cold atom Optical Lattices

We study the effect of defects in the Mott insulator phase of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice on the dynamics of resonant excitations. Defects, which can either be empty sites in a Mott insulator state with one atom per site or a singly occupied site for a filling factor two, change the dynamics of Frenkel excitons and cavity polaritons. While the vacancies in first case behave like hard sphere scatters for excitons, singly occupied sites in the latter case can lead to attractive or repulsive scattering potentials. We suggest cavity polaritons as observation tool of such defects, and show how the scattering can be controlled in changing the exciton-photon detuning. In the case of asymmetric optical lattice sites we present how the scattering effective potential can be detuned by the cavity photon polarization direction, with the possibility of a crossover from a repulsive into an attractive potential.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Self-organization of atoms in a cavity field: threshold, bistability and scaling laws

We present a detailed study of the spatial self-organization of laser-driven atoms in an optical cavity, an effect predicted on the basis of numerical simulations [P. Domokos and H. Ritsch, Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 253003 (2002)] and observed experimentally [A. T. Black et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 203001 (2003)]. Above a threshold in the driving laser intensity, from a uniform distribution the atoms evolve into one of two stable patterns that produce superradiant scattering into the cavity. We derive analytic formulas for the threshold and critical exponent of this phase transition from a mean-field approach. Numerical simulations of the microscopic dynamics reveal that, on laboratory timescale, a hysteresis masks the mean-field behaviour. Simple physical arguments explain this phenomenon and provide analytical expressions for the observable threshold. Above a certain density of the atoms a limited number of ``defects'' appear in the organized phase, and influence the statistical properties of the system. The scaling of the cavity cooling mechanism and the phase space density with the atom number is also studied.Comment: submitted to PR

Enhancing interferometric sensitivity by non-classical light from quantum non-demolition measurements in cavity QED

We propose an enhanced optical interferometer based on tailored non-classical light generated by nonlinear dynamics and projective measurements in a three-level atom cavity QED system. A coherent state in the cavity becomes dynamically entangled with two ground states of the atom and is transformed to a macroscopic superposition state via a projective measurement on the atom. We show that the resulting highly non-classical state can improve interferometric precision measurements well beyond the shot-noise limit once combined with a classical laser pulse at the input of a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. For a practical implementation, we identify an efficient phase shift estimation scheme based on the counting of photons at the interferometer output. Photon losses and photon-counting errors deteriorate the interferometer sensitivity, but we demonstrate that it still can be significantly better than the shot-noise limit under realistic conditions.Comment: 9 pages, 10 figure

Collective excitations and instability of an optical lattice due to unbalanced pumping

We solve self-consistently the coupled equations of motion for trapped particles and the field of a one-dimensional optical lattice. Optomechanical coupling creates long-range interaction between the particles, whose nature depends crucially on the relative power of the pump beams. For asymmetric pumping, traveling density wave-like collective oscillations arise in the lattice, even in the overdamped limit. Increasing the lattice size or pump asymmetry these waves can destabilize the lattice.Comment: 5 pages, minor changes (SI units, new references

Optomechanical deformation and strain in elastic dielectrics

Light forces induced by scattering and absorption in elastic dielectrics lead to local density modulations and deformations. These perturbations in turn modify light propagation in the medium and generate an intricate nonlinear response. We generalise an analytic approach where light propagation in one-dimensional media of inhomogeneous density is modelled as a result of multiple scattering between polarizable slices. Using the Maxwell stress tensor formalism we compute the local optical forces and iteratively approach self-consistent density distributions where the elastic back-action balances gradient- and scattering forces. For an optically trapped dielectric we derive the nonlinear dependence of trap position, stiffness and total deformation on the object's size and field configuration. Generally trapping is enhanced by deformation, which exhibits a periodic change between stretching and compression. This strongly deviates from qualitative expectations based on the change of photon momentum of light crossing the surface of a dielectric. We conclude that optical forces have to be treated as volumetric forces and that a description using the change of photon momentum at the surface of a medium is inappropriate