Bonn 2025 – scientific programme
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Q: Fachverband Quantenoptik und Photonik
Q 27: Poster – Ultra-cold Atoms, Ions and BEC (joint session A/Q)
Q 27.1: Poster
Tuesday, March 11, 2025, 14:00–16:00, Tent
Symmetry breaking and non-ergodicity in a driven-dissipative ensemble of multilevel atoms in a cavity — •Enrique Hernandez1, Elmer Surez1, Igor Lesanovsky2, Beatriz Olmos2, and Philippe Courteille3 — 1Center for Quantum Science and Physikalisches Institut, Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 14, 72076 Tübingen, Germany — 2Auf der Morgenstelle 14 — 3Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Centro de Pesquisa em Óptica é Fotônica, Universidade de São Paulo, Av. Trab. São Carlense 400, São Carlos, 13566-590 São Paulo, Brazil
Dissipative light-matter systems can display emergent collective behavior. Here, we report a Z2-symmetrybreaking phase transition in a system of multilevel 87Rb atoms strongly coupled to a weakly driven two-mode optical cavity. In the symmetry-broken phase, nonergodic dynamics manifests in the emergence of multiple stationary states with disjoint basins of attraction. This feature enables the amplification of a small atomic population imbalance into a characteristic macroscopic cavity transmission signal. Our experiment does not only showcase strongly dissipative atom-cavity systems as platforms for probing nontrivial collective many-body phenomena, but also highlights their potential for hosting technological applications in the context of sensing, density classification, and pattern retrieval dynamics within associative memories.
Keywords: Cavity QED; Symmetry breaking; Bistability; Multilevel atoms