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  • Letter
  • Open Access

Quantum bistability in the hyperfine ground state of atoms

B. Gábor1,2, D. Nagy1, A. Vukics1,*, and P. Domokos1

  • 1HUN-REN Wigner RCP, P.O. Box 49, H-1525 Budapest, Hungary
  • 2Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Szeged, Tisza Lajos körút 84, H-6720 Szeged, Hungary

  • *vukics.andras@wigner.hu
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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L042038 – Published 11 December, 2023

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L042038

Abstract

First-order phase transitions are ubiquitous in nature; however, this notion is ambiguous and highly debated in the case of open quantum systems. We construct a paradigmatic example which allows for elucidating the key concepts. We show that atoms in an optical cavity can manifest a first-order dissipative phase transition where the stable coexisting phases are quantum states with high quantum purity. These states include atomic hyperfine ground states and coherent states of electromagnetic field modes. The scheme benefits from the collective enhancement of the coupling between the atoms and the cavity field. Thereby we propose a readily feasible experimental scheme to study the dissipative phase transition phenomenology in the quantum limit, allowing for, in particular, performing a finite-size scaling to the thermodynamic limit.

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  33. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.5.L042038 for the derivation of the mean-field equations (1), a justification of neglecting the noise in the thermodynamic limit, and the main steps to obtain Eq. (2).

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Phys. Rev. Research 5, L042038– Published 11 December, 2023
  • Received 30 March 2023
  • Accepted 15 November 2023
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