Bistable Mott-insulator to superfluid phase transition in cavity optomechanics

Abstract

We study the many-body state of ultracold bosons in a bistable optical lattice potential in an optomechanical resonator in the weak-coupling limit. New physics arises as a result of bistability and discontinuous jumps in the cavity field. Of particular interest is the situation where the optical cavity is engineered so that a single input beam can result in two radically different stable ground states for the intracavity gas: superfluid and Mott-insulator.