Superfluid--Mott insulator transition of ultracold superradiant bosons in a cavity

Abstract: We investigate harmonically-trapped, laser-pumped bosons with infinite-range interactions induced by a dissipative high-finesse red-detuned optical cavity with numerical and analytical methods. We obtain multiple cavity and atomic observables as well as the full phase diagram of the system using the multiconfigurational time-dependent Hartree method for indistinguishable particles (MCTDH-X) approach. Besides the transition from an unorganized normal phase to a superradiant phase where atoms self-organize, we focus on an in-depth investigation of the self-organized superfluid to self-organized Mott insulator phase transition in the superradiant phase as a function of the cavity-atom coupling. The numerical results are substantiated by an analytical study of an effective Bose-Hubbard model. We numerically analyze cavity fluctuations and emergent strong correlations between atoms in the many-body state across the Mott transition via the atomic density distributions and Glauber correlation functions. Unexpectedly, the weak harmonic trap leads to features like a lattice switching between the two symmetry-broken $\mathbb{Z}_2$ configurations of the untrapped system and a reentrance of superfluidity in the Mott insulating phase. Our analytical considerations quantitatively explain the numerically observed correlation features.