Superradiant Phase Transition Research Articles

Superradiant phase transition in the ultrastrong-coupling regime of the two-photon Dicke model

The controllability of current quantum technologies allows to implement spin-boson models where two-photon couplings are the dominating terms of light-matter interaction. In this case, when the coupling strength becomes comparable with the characteristic frequencies, a spectral collapse can take place, i.e. the discrete system spectrum can collapse into a continuous band. Here, we analyze the thermodynamic limit of the two-photon Dicke model, which describes the interaction of an ensemble of qubits with a single bosonic mode. We find that there exists a parameter regime where two-photon interactions induce a superradiant phase transition, before the spectral collapse occurs. Furthermore, we extend the mean-field analysis by considering second-order quantum fluctuations terms, in order to analyze the low-energy spectrum and compare the critical behavior with the one-photon case.

Superradiance phase transition in the presence of parameter fluctuations

We theoretically analyze the effect of parameter fluctuations on the superradiance phase transition in a setup where a large number of superconducting qubits are coupled to a single cavity. We include parameter fluctuations that are typical of superconducting architectures, such as fluctuations in qubit gaps, bias points, and qubit-cavity coupling strengths. We find that the phase transition should occur in this case, although it manifests itself somewhat differently from the case with no fluctuations. We also find that fluctuations in the qubit gaps and qubit-cavity coupling strengths do not necessarily make it more difficult to reach the transition point. Fluctuations in the bias points, however, increase the coupling strength required to reach the quantum phase transition point and enter the superradiant phase. Similarly, these fluctuations lower the critical temperature for the thermal phase transition.

Ultrastrong-coupling quantum-phase-transition phenomena in a few-qubit circuit QED system

We study ultrastrong-coupling quantum-phase-transition phenomena in a few-qubit system. In the one-qubit case, three second-order transitions occur and the Goldstone mode emerges under the condition of ultrastrong-coupling strength. Moreover, a first-order phase transition occurs between two different superradiant phases. In the two-qubit case, a two-qubit Hamiltonian with qubit-qubit interactions is analyzed fully quantum mechanically. We show that the quantum phase transition is inhibited even in the ultrastrong-coupling regime in this model. In addition, in the three-qubit model, the superradiant quantum phase transition is retrieved in the ultrastrong-coupling regime. Furthermore, the N-qubit model with U(1) symmetry is studied and we find that the superradiant phase transition is inhibited or restored with the qubit-number parity.

Nonergodicity in the Anisotropic Dicke Model.

We study the ergodic-nonergodic transition in a generalized Dicke model with independent corotating and counterrotating light-matter coupling terms. By studying level statistics, the average ratio of consecutive level spacings, and the quantum butterfly effect (out-of-time correlation) as a dynamical probe, we show that the ergodic-nonergodic transition in the Dicke model is a consequence of the proximity to the integrable limit of the model when one of the couplings is set to zero. This can be interpreted as a hint for the existence of a quantum analogue of the classical Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser theorem. In addition, we show that there is no intrinsic relation between the ergodic-nonergodic transition and the precursors of the normal-superradiant quantum phase transition.

Thermodynamics and superradiant phase transitions in a three-level Dicke model.

We analyze the thermodynamic properties of a generalized Dicke model, i.e., a collection of three-level systems interacting with two bosonic modes. We show that at finite temperatures the system undergoes first-order phase transitions only, which is in contrast to the zero-temperature case where a second-order phase transition exists as well. We discuss the free energy and prominent expectation values. The limit of vanishing temperature is discussed as well.

Critical exponent of quantum phase transitions driven by colored noise

We demonstrate that criticality in a driven-dissipative system is strongly influenced by the spectral properties of the reservoir. We study the open-system realization of the Dicke model, where a bosonic cavity mode couples to a large spin formed by two motional modes of an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate. The cavity mode is driven by a high frequency laser and it decays to a Markovian bath, while the atomic mode interacts with a colored reservoir. We reveal that the soft mode fails to describe the characteristics of the criticality. We calculate the critical exponent of the superradiant phase transition and identify an inherent relation to the low-frequency spectral density function of the colored bath. We show that a finite temperature of the colored reservoir does not modify qualitatively this dependence on the spectral density function.

Effects of spin-orbit coupling on Jaynes-Cummings and Tavis-Cummings models

We consider ultracold atoms inside a ring optical cavity that supports a single plane-wave mode. The cavity field, together with an external coherent laser field, drives a two-photon Raman transition between two internal pseudo-spin states of the atom. This gives rise to an effective coupling between atom's pseudo-spin and external center-of-mass (COM) motion. For the case of a single atom inside the cavity, We show how the spin-orbit coupling modifies the static and dynamic properties of the Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model. In the case of many atoms in thermodynamic limit, we show that the spin-orbit coupling modifies the Dicke superradiance phase transition boundary and the non-superradiant normal phase may become reentrant in some regimes.

Dynamic phase transitions of a driven Ising chain in a dissipative cavity

We study the nonequilibrium quantum phase transition of an Ising chain in a dissipative cavity driven by an external transverse light field. When driving and dissipation are in balance, the system can reach a nonequilibrium steady state which undergoes a super-radiant phase transition as the driving strength increases. Interestingly, the super-radiant field changes the effective bias of the Ising chain in return and drives its own transition between the ferromagnetic and paramagnetic phase. We study the rich physics in this system with sophisticated behavior, and investigate important issues in its dynamics such as the stability of the system and criticality of the phase transition.

Superradiant Phase Transition in a Superconducting Circuit in Thermal Equilibrium.

We propose a superconducting circuit that shows a superradiant phase transition (SRPT) in thermal equilibrium. The existence of the SRPT is confirmed analytically in the limit of an infinite number of artificial atoms. We also perform a numerical diagonalization of the Hamiltonian with a finite number of atoms and observe an asymptotic behavior approaching the infinite limit as the number of atoms increases. The SRPT can also be interpreted intuitively in a classical analysis.

Ultrastrong-coupling phenomena beyond the Dicke model

We study effective light-matter interactions in a circuit QED system consisting of a single $LC$ resonator, which is coupled symmetrically to multiple superconducting qubits. Starting from a minimal circuit model, we demonstrate that in addition to the usual collective qubit-photon coupling the resulting Hamiltonian contains direct qubit-qubit interactions, which have a drastic effect on the ground and excited state properties of such circuits in the ultrastrong coupling regime. In contrast to a superradiant phase transition expected from the standard Dicke model, we find an opposite mechanism, which at very strong interactions completely decouples the photon mode and projects the qubits into a highly entangled ground state. These findings resolve previous controversies over the existence of superradiant phases in circuit QED, but they more generally show that the physics of two- or multi-atom cavity QED settings can differ significantly from what is commonly assumed.

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.

Collectively induced many-vortices topology via rotatory Dicke quantum phase transition

We examine the superradiance of a Bose–Einstein condensate pumped with a Laguerre–Gaussian laser of high winding number, e.g., . The laser beam transfers its orbital angular momentum (OAM) to the condensate at once due to the collectivity of the superradiance. An ℓ-fold rotational symmetric structure emerges with the rotatory superradiance. ℓ number of single-charge vortices appear at the arms of this structure. Even though the pump and the condensate profiles initially have cylindrical symmetry, we observe that it is broken to ℓ-fold rotational symmetry at the superradiance. Breaking of the cylindrical symmetry into the ℓ-fold symmetry and OAM transfer to the condensate become significant after the same critical pump strength. Reorganization of the condensate resembles the ordering in the experiment by Esslinger and colleagues (2010 Nature 264 1301). We numerically verify that the critical point for the onset of the reorganization, as well as the properties of the emitted pulse, conform to the characteristics of superradiant quantum phase transition.

Field-dependent superradiant quantum phase transition of molecular magnets in microwave cavities

We study a superradiant quantum phase transition in the model of triangular molecular magnets coupled to the electric component of a microwave cavity field. The transition occurs when the coupling strength exceeds a critical value, dc, which, in sharp contrast to the standard two-level emitters, can be tuned by an external magnetic field. In addition to emitted radiation, the molecules develop an in-plane electric dipole moment at the transition. We estimate that the transition can be detected in state-of-the-art microwave cavities if their electric field couples to a crystal containing a sufficient number of oriented molecules.

Quantum spin Hall insulator interacting with quantum light: Inhomogeneous Dicke model

AbstractTime‐periodic perturbations due to classical electromagnetic fields are useful to engineer the topological properties of matter using the Floquet theory. Here, we investigate the effect of quantized electromagnetic fields by focusing on the quantized light–matter interaction on the edge state of a quantum spin Hall insulator. We show that this interaction can be studied using an inhomogeneous Dicke model and that the corresponding Hamiltonian is integrable. A Dicke‐type superradiant phase transition occurs at arbitrary weak coupling and the electronic spectrum acquires a finite gap. In addition, when the total number of excitations are fixed, a photocurrent is generated along the edge, pseudoquantized as in the low‐frequency limit and decaying as for high frequencies with being the photon frequency.

Dicke coupling by feasible local measurements at the superradiant quantum phase transition.

We address characterization of many-body superradiant systems and establish a fundamental connection between quantum criticality and the possibility of locally estimating the coupling constant, i.e., extracting its value by probing only a portion of the whole system. In particular, we consider Dicke-like superradiant systems made of an ensemble of two-level atoms interacting with a single-mode radiation field at zero effective temperature, and address estimation of the coupling by measurements performed only on radiation. At first, we obtain analytically the quantum Fisher information (QFI) and show that optimal estimation of the coupling may be achieved by tuning the frequency of the radiation field to drive the system toward criticality. The scaling behavior of the QFI at the critical point is obtained explicitly upon exploiting the symplectic formalism for Gaussian states. We then analyze the performances of feasible detection schemes performed only on the radiation subsystem, namely homodyne detection and photon counting, and show that the corresponding Fisher informations (FIs) approach the global QFI in the critical region. We thus conclude that criticality is a twofold resource. On the one hand, global QFI diverges at the critical point, i.e., the coupling may be estimated with the arbitrary precision. On the other hand, the FIs of feasible local measurements (which are generally smaller than the QFI out of the critical region), show the same scaling of the global QFI; i.e., optimal estimation of coupling may be achieved by locally probing the system, despite its strongly interacting nature.

Steady-state atom-light entanglement with engineered spin-orbit coupling

By driving a Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a single-mode high-$Q$ optical resonator and coupled to a classical transverse running-wave field above a Dicke-like superradiant phase transition, the resulting cavity field-induced spin-orbit coupling leads to a band structure with doubly degenerate ground states. We show theoretically that the effective bosonic mode defined by interstate hopping can be entangled with the cavity field via the combined effect of spin-orbit coupling and dissipation.

Collapse of the superradiant phase and multiple quantum phase transitions for Bose-Einstein condensates in an optomechanical cavity

We investigate the multiple stable macroscopic quantum states of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optomechanical cavity with pump-cavity field detuning and atom-photon interaction following the experimental realization of the quantum phase transition [Nature (London) 464, 1301 (2010)]. The spin-coherent-state variational method is useful in exploring the multistability since it has the advantage of including both normal and inverted pseudospin states. In the blue detuning regime the usual transition from normal to superradiant phases still exists, however, when the atom-field coupling increases to a certain value, called the turning point, the superradiant phase collapses due to the resonant damping of the mechanical oscillator. As a consequence, the system undergoes at this point an additional phase transition to the normal phase of the atomic population inversion state. In particular, the superradiant phase disappears completely at strong photon-phonon interaction, resulting in the direct atomic population transfer between two atomic levels. Moreover, the coupling-induced collapse and revival of the superradiant state are also found in the red detuning region.

Large-N scaling behavior of the quantum fisher information in the Dicke model

Quantum Fisher information (QFI) of the reduced two-atom state is employed to capture the quantum criticality of the superradiant phase transition in the Dicke model in the infinite size and finite-$N$ systems respectively. The analytical expression of the QFI of its ground state is evaluated explicitly. And finite-size scaling analysis is performed with the large accessible system size due to the effective bosonic coherent-state technique. We also investigate the large-size scaling behavior of the scaled QFI of the reduced $N$-atom state and show the accurate exponent.

From Floquet to Dicke: Quantum Spin Hall Insulator Interacting with Quantum Light.

Time-periodic perturbations due to classical electromagnetic fields are useful to engineer the topological properties of matter using the Floquet theory. Here we investigate the effect of quantized electromagnetic fields by focusing on the quantized light-matter interaction on the edge state of a quantum spin Hall insulator. A Dicke-type superradiant phase transition occurs at arbitrary weak coupling, the electronic spectrum acquires a finite gap, and the resulting ground-state manifold is topological with a Chern number of ±1. When the total number of excitations is conserved, a photocurrent is generated along the edge, being pseudoquantized as ωln(1/ω) in the low-frequency limit and decaying as 1/ω for high frequencies with ω the photon frequency. The photon spectral function exhibits a clean Goldstone mode, a Higgs-like collective mode at the optical gap and the polariton continuum.

Variational treatment of entanglement in the Dicke model

We introduce a variational ansatz for the Dicke model that extends mean-field theory through the inclusion of spin–oscillator correlations. The correlated variational state is obtained from the mean-field product state via a unitary transformation. The ansatz becomes correct in the limit of large oscillator frequency and in the limit of a large spin, for which it captures the leading quantum corrections to the classical limit exactly including the spin–oscillator entanglement entropy. We explain the origin of the unitary transformation before we show that the ansatz improves substantially upon mean-field theory, giving near exact results for the ground state energy and very good results for other observables. We then discuss why the ansatz still encounters problems in the transition regime at moderate spin lengths, where it fails to capture the precursors of the superradiant quantum phase transition faithfully. This observation illustrates the principal limits of semi-classical formulations, even after they are extended with correlations and entanglement.