Collective excitations of a laser driven atomic condensate in an optical cavity

Abstract

We theoretically examine collective excitations of an optically driven atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, coupled to a high-finesse optical cavity. This open system has been recently used for the experimental demonstration of the Dicke superradiance of cavity photons, which is simultaneously and mutually triggered by spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry of the condensate into a crystalline order. We first develop a Hartree-Fock mean field dynamical model of the physical system. Using this model, we compute the dynamics of the cavity photons, the condensate density profile and the Dicke phase transition diagram. Both the imaginary-time and real-time evolution methods are used in the calculations. Collective excitations are determined by the solving Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. The spectrum, softening of the modes and energetic hierarchy of excitations are determined.