Dicke-like quantum phase transition and vacuum entanglement with two coupled atomic ensembles

Abstract

We study the coherent cooperative phenomena of the system composed of two interacting atomic ensembles in the thermodynamic limit. Remarkably, the system exhibits the Dicke-like quantum phase transition and entanglement behavior although the governing Hamiltonian is fundamentally different from the spin-boson Dicke Hamiltonian, offering the opportunity for investigating collective matter-light dynamics with pure matter waves. The model can be realized with two Bose-Einstein condensates or atomic ensembles trapped in two optical cavities coupled to each other. The interaction between the two separate samples is induced by virtual photon exchange.

References in corpus (5)

• Quantum Many-Body Phenomena in Coupled Cavity Arrays
• Entanglement in a second order quantum phase transition
• Collective Dynamics of Bose--Einstein Condensates in Optical Cavities
• Effective spin systems in coupled micro-cavities
• Dynamical quantum phase transitions in the dissipative Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick model and proposed realization in optical cavity QED