Self-ordering dynamics of ultracold atoms in multicolored cavity fields

TL;DR

This paper investigates how ultracold atoms in a high-Q cavity self-organize into various spatial patterns under multicolor pumping, revealing complex nonlinear dynamics, metastable states, and potential for simulating diverse many-body Hamiltonians.

Contribution

It demonstrates the control of spatial ordering and complex nonlinear dynamics of ultracold atoms in multicolored cavity fields, including superpositions and entanglement, using numerical and quantum Monte Carlo simulations.

Findings

Bistable spatial particle ordering near cavity resonances

Complex nonlinear atom-field dynamics with metastable states

Superradiant scattering and non-classical correlations observed

Abstract

We study light induced spatial crystallization of ultracold quantum particles confined along the axis of a high-$Q$ linear cavity via a transverse multicolor pump using numerical simulations. Whenever a pump frequency is tuned close to resonance with a longitudinal cavity mode, the dynamics favors bistable spatial particle ordering into a Bragg grating at a wavelength distance. Simultaneous pumping at several resonant frequencies fosters competition between the different spatial lattice orders, exhibiting complex nonlinear field dynamics involving several metastable atom-field states. For few particles even superpositions of different spatial orders entangled with different light mode amplitudes appear. By a proper choice of trap geometry and pump frequencies a broad variety of many particle Hamiltonians with a nontrivial long range coupling can be emulated in such a setup. When applying quantum Monte Carlo wave function simulations to study time evolution we find simultaneous super radiant scattering into several light modes and the buildup of strong non-classical atom field correlations.