Optomechanical self-structuring in a cold atomic gas

Abstract

The rapidly developing field of optomechanics aims at the combined control of optical and mechanical modes. In cold atoms, the spontaneous emergence of spatial structures due to optomechanical back-action has been observed in one dimension in optical cavities or highly anisotropic samples. Extensions to higher dimensions that aim to exploit multimode configurations have been suggested theoretically. Here, we describe a simple experiment with many spatial degrees of freedom, in which two continuous symmetries - rotation and translation in the plane orthogonal to a pump beam axis - are spontaneously broken. We observe the simultaneous long-range spatial structuring (with hexagonal symmetry) of the density of a cold atomic cloud and of the pump optical field, with adjustable length scale. Being based on coherent phenomena (diffraction and the dipole force), this scheme can potentially be extended to quantum degenerate gases. © 2014 Macmillan Publishers Limited. All rights reserved.