Collective dynamics of cold atoms in a cavity

Final Activity Report Summary - COLDCATC (Collective dynamics of cold atoms in a cavity)

We studied various aspects of the mechanical effect of light on atoms in an optical resonator where the interaction is significantly enhanced due to the photon "recycling'' by mirror reflections. The atom, meanwhile moving under the influence of the cavity field force, exerts a non-negligible backaction on the field. We have set up a numerical simulation, based on the quantum Monte Carlo wavefunction method, which describes the coupled, nonlinear dynamics of the atomic centre-of-mass and the field modes at a fully quantum mechanical level. We proved that the far-off-resonance dipole trap created by a cavity field actively damps the atomic vibration despite the large detuning. As a consequence, it captures atoms with much larger initial velocities and traps them much longer than external dipole traps.

Many-body effects are an inherent feature of the cavity-induced forces for a dilute gas of atoms. In certain schemes the efficiency of the cooling significantly improves owing to a collective action of the atoms, e.g. they can self-organise into a regular pattern and dissipate motional energy by superradiant scattering into the cavity. We determined the conditions for the self-organisation, a first-order symmetry-breaking phase transition, to occur.

Final Activity Report Summary - COLDCATC (Collective dynamics of cold atoms in a cavity)

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