Self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate in an optical cavity

Abstract

The spatial self-organization of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a high-finesse linear optical cavity is discussed. The condensate atoms are laser-driven from the side and scatter photons into the cavity. Above a critical pump intensity the homogeneous condensate evolves into a stable pattern bound by the cavity field. The transition point is determined analytically from a mean-field theory. We calculate the lowest lying Bogoliubov excitations of the coupled BEC-cavity system and the quantum depletion due to the atom-field coupling.