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We study the localization transition of an atom confined by an external optical lattice in a highfinesse cavity. The atom-cavity coupling yields an effective secondary lattice potential, whose wavelength is incommensurate with the periodicity of the optical lattice. The cavity lattice can induce localization of the atomic wave function analogously to the Aubry-André localization transition. Starting from the master equation for the cavity and the atom we perform a mapping of the system dynamics to a Hubbard Hamiltonian, which can be reduced to the Harper's Hamiltonian in appropriate limits. We evaluate the phase diagram for the atom ground state and show that the transition between extended and localized wavefunction is controlled by the strength of the cavity nonlinearity, which determines the size of the localized region and the behaviour of the Lyapunov exponent. The Lyapunov exponent, in particular, exhibits resonance-like behaviour in correspondence with the optomechanical resonances. Finally we discuss the experimental feasibility of these predictions.

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Topological materials have potential applications for quantum technologies. Non-interacting topological materials, such as e.g., topological insulators and superconductors, are classified by means of fundamental symmetry classes. It is instead only partially understood how interactions affect topological properties. Here, we discuss a model where topology emerges from the quantum interference between single-particle dynamics and global interactions. The system is composed by soft-core bosons that interact via global correlated hopping in a one-dimensional lattice. The onset of quantum interference leads to spontaneous breaking of the lattice translational symmetry, the corresponding phase resembles nontrivial states of the celebrated Su-Schriefer-Heeger model. Like the fermionic Peierls instability, the emerging quantum phase is a topological insulator and is found at half fillings. Originating from quantum interference, this topological phase is found in "exact" density-matrix renormalization group calculations and is entirely absent in the mean-field approach. We argue that these dynamics can be realized in existing experimental platforms, such as cavity quantum electrodynamics setups, where the topological features can be revealed in the light emitted by the resonator.

We investigate the mean-field phase diagram of the Bose-Hubbard model with infinite-range interactions in two dimensions. This model describes ultracold bosonic atoms confined by a twodimensional optical lattice and dispersively coupled to a cavity mode with the same wavelength as the lattice. We determine the ground-state phase diagram for a grand-canonical ensemble by means of analytical and numerical methods. Our results mostly agree with the ones reported in Dogra et al. [PRA 94, 023632 (2016)], and have a remarkable qualitative agreement with the quantum Monte Carlo phase diagrams of Flottat et al. [PRB 95, 144501 (2017)]. The salient differences concern the stability of the supersolid phases, which we discuss in detail. Finally, we discuss differences and analogies between the ground state properties of strong long-range interacting bosons with the ones predicted for repulsively interacting dipolar bosons in two dimensions.This manuscript is organized as follows. In Sec. II we introduce the Bose-Hubbard model and review the ground-state properties in the atomic limit, namely, when the kinetic energy is set to zero. In Section III we derive the mean-field Hamiltonian and employ the path-integral formalism to analytically determine the transition from incompressible to compressible phases. In Sec. IV we numerically determine the ground-state phase diagram and compare our results with the ones reported so far in the literature. The conclusions are drawn in Sec. V while the appendices provide details on the numerical methods for calculating the mean-field phase diagrams. arXiv:1902.05801v1 [cond-mat.quant-gas]