Light-induced coherence in an atom-cavity system

2018/07/31 by Christoph Georges, Jayson G. Cosme, Ludwig Mathey +1 · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.quant-gas

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.121.220405

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 121, 220405 (2018) · 5 page, 3 figures

arxiv created 2018/11/20 · arxiv updated 2018/12/05

Abstract

We demonstrate light-induced formation of coherence in a cold atomic gas system that utilizes the suppression of a competing density wave (DW) order. The condensed atoms are placed in an optical cavity and pumped by an external optical standing wave, which induces a long-range interaction mediated by photon scattering and a resulting DW order above a critical pump strength. We show that light-induced temporal modulation of the pump wave can suppress this DW order and restore coherence. This establishes a foundational principle of dynamical control of competing orders analogous to a hypothesized mechanism for light-induced superconductivity in high-T_c cuprates.

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