Bistability effect in the extreme strong coupling regime of the Jaynes-Cummings model

We study the nonlinear response of a driven cavity QED system in the extreme strong coupling regime where the saturation photon number is below one by many orders of magnitude. In this regime, multi-photon resonances within the Jaynes--Cummings spectrum up to high order can be resolved. We identify an intensity and frequency range of the external coherent drive for which the system exhibits bistability instead of resonant multi-photon transitions. The cavity field evolves into a mixture of the vacuum and another quasi-classical state well separated in phase space. The corresponding time evolution of the outgoing intensity is a telegraph signal alternating between two attractors

Depolarization shift of the superradiant phase transition

We investigate the possibility of a Dicke-type superradiant phase transition of an atomic gas with an extended model which takes into account the short-range depolarizing interactions between atoms approaching each other as close as the atomic size scale, which interaction appears in a regularized electric-dipole picture of the QED of atoms. By using a mean field model, we find that a critical density does indeed exist, though the atom-atom contact interaction shifts it to a higher value than it can be obtained from the bare Dicke-model. We argue that the system, at the critical density, transitions to the condensed rather than the "superradiant" phase.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur

Cavity nonlinear optics with few photons and ultracold quantum particles

The light force on particles trapped in the field of a high-Q cavity mode depends on the quantum state of field and particle. Different photon numbers generate different optical potentials anddifferent motional states induce different field evolution. Even for weak saturation and linear polarizability the induced particle motion leads to nonlinear field dynamics. We derive a corresponding effective field Hamiltonian containing all the powers of the photon number operator, which predicts nonlinear phase shifts and squeezing even at the few-photon level. Wave-function simulations of the full particle-field dynamics confirm this and show significant particle-field entanglement in addition.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Microscopic physics of quantum self-organisation of optical lattices in cavities

We study quantum particles at zero temperature in an optical lattice coupled to a resonant cavity mode. The cavity field substantially modifies the particle dynamics in the lattice, and for strong particle-field coupling leads to a quantum phase with only every second site occupied. We study the growth of this new order out of a homogeneous initial distribution for few particles as the microscopic physics underlying a quantum phase transition. Simulations reveal that the growth dynamics crucially depends on the initial quantum many-body state of the particles and can be monitored via the cavity fluorescence. Studying the relaxation time of the ordering reveals inhibited tunnelling, which indicates that the effective mass of the particles is increased by the interaction with the cavity field. However, the relaxation becomes very quick for large coupling.Comment: 14 pages 6 figure

Adequacy of the Dicke model in cavity QED: a counter-"no-go" statement

The long-standing debate whether the phase transition in the Dicke model can be realized with dipoles in electromagnetic fields is yet an unsettled one. The well-known statement often referred to as the "no-go theorem", asserts that the so-called A-square term, just in the vicinity of the critical point, becomes relevant enough to prevent the system from undergoing a phase transition. At variance with this common belief, in this paper we prove that the Dicke model does give a consistent description of the interaction of light field with the internal excitation of atoms, but in the dipole gauge of quantum electrodynamics. The phase transition cannot be excluded by principle and a spontaneous transverse-electric mean field may appear. We point out that the single-mode approximation is crucial: the proper treatment has to be based on cavity QED, wherefore we present a systematic derivation of the dipole gauge inside a perfect Fabry-P\'erot cavity from first principles. Besides the impact on the debate around the Dicke phase transition, such a cleanup of the theoretical ground of cavity QED is important because currently there are many emerging experimental approaches to reach strong or even ultrastrong coupling between dipoles and photons, which demand a correct treatment of the Dicke model parameters

Infinitesimal multi-mode Bargmann-state representation

We construct a representation of the Hilbert-space of a light mode (harmonic oscillator) in which an arbitrary state vector is expanded using Bargmann states \Bket{\alpha} with real parameters $\alpha$ which are in an infinitesimal vicinity of zero. The complete Hilbert-space structure is represented in the one- and multimode case as well, making the representation able to deal with problems of continuous-variable quantum information processing