Experimental observation of Higgs oscillations and their power-law decay across pairing regimes in a cavity QED quantum simulator

Abstract

Understanding how pairing correlations in superconductors evolve out of equilibrium is a central challenge in quantum many-body physics. In systems with $s$-wave pairing, the character of Cooper pairing evolves continuously from a BCS regime of weakly bound, overlapping pairs to a BEC regime of tightly bound molecules, each with distinct excitation spectra. Here we realize and probe pairing dynamics across these regimes using cold, non-degenerate $^{87}$Rb atoms coupled to an optical cavity with Floquet dressing. Our cavity-QED platform emulates fermionic superfluids through a mapping onto Anderson pseudospins, while optical and microwave control tunes the ratio of interactions to single-particle energies, providing a flexible approach complementary to ultracold Feshbach and ultrafast solid-state platforms. Following a quench, we observe persistent pairing and transient oscillations of the order parameter associated with a collective amplitude (Higgs) mode. We find that the decay of these oscillations sharply distinguishes weak- and strong-pairing regimes: in the weak-pairing regime, oscillations decay with a power-law exponent $|α|=0.65(8)$, whereas in the strong-pairing regime the decay is substantially faster, with $|α|>1$. The oscillation frequency is set by the minimum quasiparticle excitation energy, directly linking nonequilibrium dynamics to the underlying excitation spectrum. Our results establish nonequilibrium dynamics as a direct probe of pairing character and collective excitations in interacting quantum systems.