Phase transitions in the open Dicke model: A degenerate-perturbation-theory approach

We study the steady-state behavior of the open Dicke model, which describes the collective interaction of N spin-1/2 particles with a lossy, quantized cavity mode and exhibits a superradiant phase transition above a critical light-matter coupling. While the standard model conserves total spin, Kirton and Keeling Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 123602 (2017) demonstrated that even infinitesimal homogeneous local dephasing destroys this phase transition and that local atomic decay can restore it. We analyze this interplay using degenerate perturbation theory across subspaces of fixed total spin, S. For coupling strengths above the threshold, there exists a critical spin value S₂ such that the superradiant phase transition occurs only for S>S₂. The perturbative approach captures how weak dephasing and decay induce mixing between different S subspaces, yielding a steady-state spin distribution whose width scales as 1/N. This framework requires only the first and second moments and can be implemented via different methods that can yield these two moments (for example, the second-cumulant approach), circumventing the need for full density matrix calculations. These results bridge the quantum Rabi model and Dicke physics, elucidate the roles of dephasing and decay in collective quantum effects, and apply broadly to open quantum systems with degenerate steady states.