We show that cavity-field fluctuations can induce interesting magnetic phases and phase transitions in an atom-cavity coupled system. Adopting a numerical density-matrix-renormalization-group method, we study the steady state of a two-component Fermi gas subject to cavity-assisted Raman coupling in a one-dimensional lattice at half filling. The cavity-enhanced atom-photon coupling introduces a dynamic long-range interaction in the atoms, which competes with the short-range on-site interactions and leads to a rich phase diagram with a variety of magnetic orders. Importantly, as all the phase transitions take place outside the superradiant regime, the magnetic orders are associated with cavity-field fluctuations with a vanishing number of photons on the mean-field level.

• Received 30 January 2018

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.98.043613