Optical signatures of quantum phase transitions in a light-matter system

Abstract

Information about quantum phase transitions in conventional condensed matter systems, must be sought by probing the matter system itself. By contrast, we show that mixed matter-light systems offer a distinct advantage in that the photon field carries clear signatures of the associated quantum critical phenomena. Having derived an accurate, size-consistent Hamiltonian for the photonic field in the well-known Dicke model, we predict striking behavior of the optical squeezing and photon statistics near the phase transition. The corresponding dynamics resemble those of a degenerate parametric amplifier. Our findings boost the motivation for exploring exotic quantum phase transition phenomena in atom-cavity, nanostructure-cavity, and nanostructure-photonic-band-gap systems.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Finite-Size Scaling Exponents of the Lipkin-Meshkov-Glick Model
• Direct equivalence between quantum phase transition phenomena in radiation-matter and magnetic systems: scaling of entanglement
• Scaling of Berry's Phase Close to the Dicke Quantum Phase Transition
• Optically controlled spin-glasses in multi-qubit cavity systems