Light-Mediated Collective Atomic Motion in an Optical Lattice Coupled to a Membrane

Abstract

We observe effects of collective atomic motion in a one-dimensional optical lattice coupled to an optomechanical system. In this hybrid atom-optomechanical system, the lattice light generates a coupling between the lattice atoms as well as between atoms and a micromechanical membrane oscillator. For large atom numbers we observe an instability in the coupled system, resulting in large-amplitude atom-membrane oscillations. We show that this behavior can be explained by light-mediated collective atomic motion in the lattice, which arises for large atom number, small atom-light detuning and asymmetric pumping of the lattice, in agreement with previous theoretical work. The model connects the optomechanical instability to a phase delay in the global atomic back-action onto the lattice light, which we observe in a direct measurement.

new introduction, title and outlook; small modifications of the main text and figures

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Cited by in corpus (19)

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• Cavity-induced emergent topological spin textures in a Bose Einstein condensate
• Enhancing nanomechanical squeezing by atomic interactions in a hybrid atom-optomechanical system
• Cavity-free quantum optomechanical cooling by atom-modulated radiation
• Steady-state phase diagram of quantum gases in a lattice coupled to a membrane
• Theory of waveguide-QED with moving emitters
• Doubly-dressed states for near-field trapping and subwavelength lattice structuration
• Tuning the Order of the Nonequilibrium Quantum Phase Transition in a Hybrid Atom-Optomechanical System
• Atomic quadrature squeezing and quantum state transfer in a hybrid atom-optomechanical cavity with two Duffing mechanical oscillators
• Bose-Einstein condensates in an atom-optomechanical system with effective global non-uniform interaction
• Non-equilibrium quantum phase transition in a spinor quantum gas in a lattice coupled to a membrane
• Mapping standing-wave cavity modes with a commercial scanning near-field microscope tip
• Time crystal and chaos in the hybrid atom-optomechanics system
• Projection Optimization Method for Open-Dissipative Quantum Fluids and its Application to a Single Vortex in a Photon Bose-Einstein Condensate
• Nanomechanically-induced nonequilibrium quantum phase transition to a self-organized density wave of a Bose-Einstein condensate
• Third quantization with Hartree approximation for open-system bosonic transport