Effects of Spin-Orbit Coupling on Jaynes-Cummings and Tavis-Cummings Models

Abstract: We consider ultracold atoms inside a ring optical cavity that supports a single plane-wave mode. The cavity field, together with an external coherent laser field, drives a two-photon Raman transition between two internal pseudo-spin states of the atom. This gives rise to an effective coupling between atom's pseudo-spin and external center-of-mass (COM) motion. For the case of a single atom inside the cavity, We show how the spin-orbit coupling modifies the static and dynamic properties of the Jaynes-Cummings (JC) model. In the case of many atoms in thermodynamic limit, we show that the spin-orbit coupling modifies the Dicke superradiance phase transition boundary and the non-superradiant normal phase may become reentrant in some regimes.