Dicke phase transition with multiple superradiant states in quantum chaotic resonators

A. F. acknowledges funding from KAUST (Grant No. CRG-1-2012-FRA-005). A. D. F. acknowledges support from the EPSRC (Fellowships No. EP/I004602/1 and No. EP/J004200/1).We experimentally investigate the Dicke phase transition in chaotic optical resonators realized with two-dimensional photonics crystals. This setup circumvents the constraints of the system originally investigated by Dicke and allows a detailed study of the various properties of the superradiant transition. Our experimental results, analytical prediction, and numerical modeling based on random-matrix theory demonstrate that the probability density P(Gamma) of the resonance widths provides a new criterion to test the occurrence of the Dicke transition.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe