Eur. Phys. J. D (2013) 67: 124
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2013-40142-2

Regular Article

Cavity optomechanics with a trapped, interacting Bose-Einstein condensate

Institute for Solid State Physics and Optics, Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 49, 1525 Budapest, Hungary

^a e-mail: nagy.david@wigner.mta.hu

Received: 12 March 2013
Published online: 27 June 2013

Abstract

The dispersive interaction of a Bose-Einstein condensate with a single mode of a high-finesse optical cavity realizes the radiation pressure coupling Hamiltonian. In this system the role of the mechanical oscillator is played by a single condensate excitation mode that is selected by the cavity mode function. We study the effect of atomic s-wave collisions and show that it merely renormalizes parameters of the usual optomechanical interaction. Moreover, we show that even in the case of strong harmonic confinement – which invalidates the use of Bloch states – a single excitation mode of the Bose-Einstein condensate couples significantly to the light field, that is the simplified picture of a single “mechanical” oscillator mode remains valid.