Fragmented Superradiance of a Bose-Einstein Condensate in an Optical Cavity

Phys Rev Lett. 2017 Jan 6;118(1):013603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.013603. Epub 2017 Jan 6.

Abstract

The Dicke model and the superradiance of two-level systems in a radiation field have many applications. Recently, a Dicke quantum phase transition has been realized with a Bose-Einstein condensate in a cavity. We numerically solve the many-body Schrödinger equation and study correlations in the ground state of interacting bosons in a cavity as a function of the strength of a driving laser. Beyond a critical strength, the bosons occupy multiple modes macroscopically while remaining superradiant. This fragmented superradiance can be detected by analyzing the variance of single-shot measurements.