Atom induced cavities and tunable long-range interactions between atoms trapped near photonic crystals

Using cold atoms to simulate strongly interacting quantum systems represents an exciting frontier of physics. However, achieving tunable, coherent long-range interactions between atoms is an outstanding challenge, which currently leaves a large class of models inaccessible to quantum simulation. Here, we propose a solution exploiting the powerful new platform of cold atoms trapped near nano-photonic systems. We show that the dielectric contrast of an atom trapped near a photonic crystal can seed a localized cavity mode around the atomic position. In a dynamic form of “all-atomic” cavity QED, the length of these cavity modes can be tuned, and atoms separated by the order of the e↵ective cavity length can interact coherently with each other. Considering realistic conditions such as fabrication disorder and photon losses, coherent long-range potentials or spin interactions can be dominant in the system over length scales up to hundreds of wavelengths.