Paper detail

Light-induced quantum droplet phases of lattice bosons in multimode cavities

Multimode optical cavities can be used to implement interatomic interactions which are highly tunable in strength and range. For bosonic atoms trapped in an optical lattice, cavity-mediated interactions compete with the short-range interatomic repulsion, which we study using an extended Bose-Hubbard model. Already in a single-mode cavity, where the corresponding interaction has an infinite range, a rich phase diagram has been experimentally observed, featuring density-wave and supersolid self-organized phases in addition to the usual superfluid and Mott insulator. Here we show that, for any finite range of the cavity-mediated interaction, quantum self-bound droplets dominate the ground state phase diagram. Their size and in turn density is not externally fixed but rather emerges from the competition between local repulsion and finite-range attraction. Therefore, the phase diagram becomes very rich, featuring both compressible superfluid/supersolid as well as incompressible Mott and density-wave droplets. Additionally, we observe droplets with a compressible core and incompressible outer shells.