Cavity-Mediated Gas-Liquid Transition

TL;DR

This paper investigates a cavity-mediated gas-liquid transition in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing how cavity-assisted processes and quantum fluctuations induce phase changes and superradiance, with observable cavity field signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for gas-liquid transition driven by cavity-assisted spin mixing and quantum fluctuations in a Bose-Einstein condensate.

Findings

Superradiance occurs at infinitesimal pumping below a critical Zeeman field.

First-order transition causes an abrupt jump in cavity field.

Cavity field scales linearly with pumping in the liquid phase.

Abstract

We study the gas-liquid transition in a binary Bose-Einstein condensate, where the two Zeeman-shifted hyperfine spin components are coupled by cavity-assisted Raman processes. Below a critical Zeeman field, the cavity becomes superradiant for an infinitesimally small pumping strength, where the enhanced superradiance is facilitated by the simultaneous formation of quantum droplet, a self-bound liquid phase stabilized by quantum fluctuations. Above the critical Zeeman field, the gas-liquid transition only takes place at a finite pumping strength after the system becomes superradiant. As the back action of the gas-liquid transition, the superradiant cavity field undergoes an abrupt jump at the first-order transition point. Furthermore, as a result of the fixed density ratio of the quantum droplet, the cavity field exhibits a linear scaling with the pumping strength in the liquid phase. These features serve as prominent signals for the cavity-mediated gas-liquid transition and coexistence, which derive from the interplay of Zeeman field, cavity-assisted spin mixing, and quantum fluctuations.