We investigate a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate that is optically driven via a retro-reflecting mirror, forming a single optical feedback loop. This induces a peculiar type of long-range atomic interaction with highly oscillatory behavior, and we show here how the sign of the underlying interaction potential can be controlled by additional optical elements and external fields. This additional tunability enriches the behavior of the system substantially, and gives rise to a surprising range of new ground states of the condensate. In particular, we find the emergence of self-bound crystals of quantum droplets with various lattice structures, from simple and familiar triangular arrays to complex superlattice structures and crystals with entirely broken rotational symmetry. This includes mesoscopic clusters composed of small numbers of quantum droplets as well as extended crystalline structures. Importantly, such ordered states are entirely self-bound and stable without any external in-plane confinement, having no counterpart to other quantum-gas settings with long-range atomic interactions.
We numerically study the many-body physics of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates with strong dipole-dipole interactions. We observe the formation of self-bound droplets, and explore phase diagrams that feature a variety of exotic supersolid states. In all of these cases, the large and tunable molecular dipole moments enable the study of unexplored regimes and phenomena, including liquid-like density saturation and universal stability scaling laws for droplets, as well as pattern formation and the limits of droplet supersolidity. We discuss a realistic experimental approach to realize both the…
Quantum fluctuations can stabilize Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) against the mean-field collapse. Stabilization of the condensate has been observed in quantum degenerate Bose-Bose mixtures and dipolar BECs. The fine-tuning of the interatomic interactions can lead to the emergence of two new states of matter: liquid-like selfbound quantum droplets and supersolid crystals formed from these droplets. We review the properties of these exotic states of matter and summarize the experimental progress made using dipolar quantum gases and Bose-Bose mixtures. We conclude with an outline of important o…
We describe a quantum droplet of a Bose-Bose mixture squeezed by an external harmonic forces in one spatial direction. Our approach is based on the self-consistent method formulated in [1]. The true spatial droplet profile in the direction of confinement is accounted for, however local density approximation is assumed in the free directions. We define a numerical approach to find the beyond-mean-field contribution to the chemical potential (Lee-Huang-Yang chemical potential) -- the quantity that determines the droplet's profile. In addition to the numerical approach, we find the Lee-Huang-Yang…
We study coherent dynamics of two interacting Bose-Bose droplets by means of the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The relative motion of the droplets couples to the phases of their components. The dynamics can be understood in terms of the evolution of zero-energy modes recovering symmetries spontaneously broken by the mean-field solution. These are translational symmetry and two U(1) symmetries, associated with the phases of the droplets' two components. A phase-dependent interaction potential and double Josephson-junction equations are introduced to explain the observed variety of differe…
We systematically study the effects of higher-order quantum and thermal fluctuations on the stabilization of self-bound droplets in Bose mixtures employing the time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory. We calculate the ground-state energy, the droplet equilibrium density, the depletion and anomalous density of the droplets as well as the critical temperature as a function of the relevant parameters. Our findings are compared with previous analytical predictions and diffusion Monte Carlo simulations. We employ our theory together with the local density approximation for quantum and thermal…
We study the equilibrium properties of self-bound droplets in two-dimensional Bose mixtures employing the time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory. This theory allows one to understand both the many-body and temperature effects beyond the Lee-Huang-Yang description. We calculate higher-order corrections to the excitations, the sound velocity, and the energy of the droplet. Our results for the ground-state energy are compared with the diffusion Monte Carlo data and good agreement is found. The behavior of the depletion and anomalous density of the droplet is also discussed. At finite tempe…
The long-range and anisotropic nature of the dipolar interaction provides the so-called supersolid phases in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in an optical lattice. However, in a certain area of dipole interaction parameters, BECs can form into a droplet. In this paper, in order to qualitatively understand the droplet formations, we propose a toy model that allows us to estimate the size and shape of droplets in dipolar Bose-Hubbard system in the optical lattice. We compare results of the toy model with numerical solutions of the mean-field calculation.
We systematically investigate the ground-state properties of self-bound droplets of quasi-two-dimensional binary Bose gases by using the Gaussian state theory. We find that quantum droplets consists two macroscopic squeezed phases and a macroscopic coherent phase. We map out the phase diagram and determine all phase boundaries via both numerical and nearly analytical methods. In particular, we find three easily accessible signatures for the quantum phases and the stablization mechanism of the self-bound droplets by precisely measuring their radial size. Our studies indicate that binary droplet…
Quantum fluctuations are the origin of genuine quantum many-body effects, and can be neglected in classical mean-field phenomena. Here we report on the observation of stable quantum droplets containing $\sim$ 800 atoms which are expected to collapse at the mean-field level due to the essentially attractive interaction. By systematic measurements on individual droplets we demonstrate quantitatively that quantum fluctuations stabilize them against the mean-field collapse. We observe in addition interference of several droplets indicating that this stable many-body state is phase coherent.
We show that the ground state of a dipolar Bose gas in a cylindrically symmetric harmonic trap has a rich phase diagram, including droplet crystal states in which a set of droplets arrange into a lattice pattern that breaks the rotational symmetry. An analytic model for small droplet crystals is developed and used to obtain a zero temperature phase diagram that is numerically validated. We show that in certain regimes a coherent low-density halo surrounds the droplet crystal giving rise to a novel phase with localized and extended features.
We theoretically investigate the finite-temperature structure and collective excitations of a self-bound ultradilute Bose droplet in a flat space realized in a binary Bose mixture with attractive inter-species interactions on the verge of mean-field collapse. As the droplet formation relies critically on the repulsive force provided by Lee-Huang-Yang quantum fluctuations, which can be easily compensated by thermal fluctuations, we find a significant temperature effect in the density distribution and collective excitation spectrum of the Bose droplet. A finite-temperature phase diagram as a fun…
We explore the phase diagram of a finite-sized dysprosium dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate in a cylindrical harmonic trap. We monitor the final state after the scattering length is lowered from the repulsive BEC regime to the quantum droplet regime. Either an adiabatic transformation between a BEC and a quantum droplet is obtained or, above a critical trap aspect ratio $λ_{\rm c}=1.87(14)$, a modulational instability results in the formation of multiple droplets. This is in full agreement with the predicted structure of the phase diagram with a crossover region below $λ_{\rm c}$ and a multista…
We systematically investigate the properties of three-dimensional dipolar binary Bose mixture at low temperatures. A set of coupled self-consistent equations of motion are derived for the two condensates. In the homogeneous case, useful analytical formulas for the condensate depletion, the anomalous density, the ground-state energy, and the equation of state are obtained. The theory is extended to the inhomogeneous case and the importance of the inhomogeneity is highlighted. Our results open up a new avenue for studying dipolar mixture droplets. Impacts of the dipole-dipole interaction on the …
Quantum droplets have intrigued much attention recently in view of their successful observations in the ultracold homonuclear atoms. In this work, we demonstrate a new mechanism for the formation of quantum droplet in heteronuclear atomic systems, i.e., by applying the synthetic spin-orbit coupling(SOC). Take the Bose-Fermi mixture for example, we show that by imposing a Rashba SOC between the spin states of fermions, the greatly suppressed Fermi pressure can enable the formation of Bose-Fermi droplets even for very weak boson-fermion attractions, which are insufficient to bound a droplet if w…
We define a formalism of a self-consistent description of the ground state of a weakly interacting Bose system, accounting for higher order terms in expansion of energy in the diluteness parameter. The approach is designed to be applied to a Bose-Bose mixture in a regime of weak collapse where quantum fluctuations lead to stabilization of the system and formation of quantum liquid droplets. The approach is based on the Generalized Gross -- Pitaevskii equation accounting for quantum depletion and anomalous density terms. The equation is self-consistently coupled to modified Bogoliubov equations…
We study the quantum-droplet state in a 3-dimensional (3D) Bose gas in the presence of 1D spin-orbit-coupling and Raman coupling, especially the stripe phase with density modulation, by numerically computing the ground state energy including the mean-field energy and Lee-HuangYang correction. In this droplet state, the stripe can exist in a wider range of Raman coupling, compared with the BEC-gas state. More intriguingly, both spin-orbit-coupling and Raman coupling strengths can be used to tune the droplet density.
We study an impurity immersed in the mixture of Bose ultracold gases in the regime where a quantum droplet exists. The quasi-one-dimensional geometry is considered. We find an effective attractive potential that acts by the quantum droplet onto the impurity. The bound states of the impurity in this potential are investigated. These impurity bound states can provide potential probes for the presence of quantum fluctuations effects on the droplet properties. In the case of strong impurity-BEC coupling, we study the properties of the nonlinear local modes on the impurity induced by the quantum fl…
Motivated by the recent experiment [H. Kadau \textit{et al.}, arXiv:1508.05007 (2015)], we study roton instability and droplet formation in a Bose-Einstein condensate of $^{164}$Dy atoms with strong magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. We numerically solve the cubic-quintic Gross-Pitaevskii equation with dipole-dipole interaction, and show that the three-body interaction plays a significant role in the formation of droplet patterns. We numerically demonstrate the formation of droplet patterns and crystalline structures, decay of droplets, and hysteresis behavior, which are in good agreement wit…
Stabilized by quantum fluctuations, dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates can form self-bound liquidlike droplets in the mean-field unstable regime. However in the Bogoliubov theory, some phonon energies are imaginary in the long-wavelength limit, implying dynamical instability of this system. A similar instability appears in the Bogoliubov theory of a binary quantum droplet, and is removed due to higher-order quantum fluctuations as shown recently [1]. In this work, we study the phonon energy of a dipolar quantum droplet in the Beliaev formalism, and find that quantum fluctuations can enhance the…
Bose-Bose droplets are self-bound objects emerging from a mixture of two interacting Bose-Einstein condensates when their interactions are appropriately tuned. During droplet formation three continuous symmetries of the system's Hamiltonian are broken: translational symmetry and two U1 symmetries, allowing for arbitrary choice of phases of the mean-field wavefunctions describing the two components. Breaking of these symmetries must be accompanied by appearance of zero-energy excitations in the energy spectrum of the system recovering the broken symmetries. Normal modes corresponding to these e…
We study the formation of quantum droplets in the mixture of a single-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), and a two-species Fermi superfluid across a wide Feshbach resonance. With repulsive boson-boson and attractive boson-fermion interactions, we show that quantum droplets can be stabilized by attractive fermion-fermion interactions in the Bardeen-Cooper-Schieffer (BCS) side of the resonance, and can also exist in deep BEC regime under weak boson-fermion interactions. We map out the phase diagram for stable droplets with respect to the boson-boson and boson-fermion interactions, and dis…
Gases of doubly-dipolar particles, with both magnetic and electric dipole moments, offer intriguing novel possibilities. We show that the interplay between doubly-dipolar interactions, quantum stabilization, and external confinement results in a rich ground-state physics of supersolids and incoherent droplet arrays in doubly-dipolar condensates. Our study reveals novel possibilities for engineering quantum droplets and droplet supersolids, including supersolid-supersolid transitions and the realization of supersolid arrays of pancake droplets.
Quantum droplets may form out of a gaseous Bose-Einstein condensate, stabilized by quantum fluctuations beyond mean field. We show that multiple singly-quantized vortices may form in these droplets at moderate angular momenta in two dimensions. Droplets carrying these precursors of an Abrikosov lattice remain self-bound for certain timescales after switching off an initial harmonic confinement. Furthermore, we examine how these vortex-carrying droplets can be formed in a more pertubation-resistant setting, by starting from a rotating binary Bose-Einstein condensate and inducing a metastable pe…
We calculate analytically the quantum and thermal fluctuations corrections of a dilute quasi-two-dimensional Bose-condensed dipolar gas. We show that these fluctuations may change their character from repulsion to attraction in the density-temperature plane owing to the striking momentum dependence of the dipole-dipole interactions. The dipolar instability is halted by such unconventional beyond mean field corrections leading to the formation of a droplet phase. The equilibrium features and coherence properties exhibited by such droplets are deeply discussed. At finite temperature, we find tha…
The ground state of a free standing, self-bound droplet comprising four hundred dipolar Bose particles with aligned dipole moments, with an additional purely repulsive two-body interaction, is investigated by Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The focus here is on the evolution of the cluster as the effective range of the repulsive interaction is varied. We identify a ``classical'' regime, in which binding arises exclusively from the dipolar potential energy and the cluster is a quasi-one-dimensional filament, and a ``quantum'' regime of prolate droplets, held together to a significant degree by…
We theoretically study dynamical formation of a quantum droplet in a two-component Bose-Hubbard system with an external trap potential. Specifically, the superfluid in the central region surrounded by the Mott insulator with double filling forms a quantum droplet, which is self-bound thanks to the discontinuous nature of the quantum phase transition between the two phases. We show how to induce the characteristic behavior of the droplet through the control of the trap potential by using the time-dependent Gutzwiller simulations in a two-dimensional system. The static and dynamical properties o…
We use exact Quantum Monte Carlo techniques to study the properties of quantum droplets in two-component bosonic mixtures with contact interactions in one spatial dimension. We systematically study the surface tension, the density profile and the breathing mode as a function of the number of particles in the droplet and of the ratio of coupling strengths between intra-species repulsion and inter-species attraction. We find that deviations from the predictions of the generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation are small in most cases of interest.
We study a liquid quantum droplets in a mixture of two-component Bose-Einstein condensates under a variable confinement introduced along one or two spatial dimensions. Despite the atom-atom scattering has a three-dimensional character, discreetness of the available modes in the reduced dimension(s) strongly influences the zero-point energy -- the Lee-Huang-Yang term. In a weakly interaction limit, it is the leading correction to the mean-field energy at the crossover from three to two dimensions, or from three to one dimension. We analyze the properties of the droplets at the dimensional cross…
Attractive Bose-Einstein condensates can host two types of macroscopic self-bound states of different nature: bright solitons and quantum liquid droplets. Here, we investigate the connection between them with a Bose-Bose mixture confined in an optical waveguide. We develop a simple theoretical model to show that, depending on atom number and interaction strength, solitons and droplets can be smoothly connected or remain distinct states coexisting only in a bi-stable region. We experimentally measure their spin composition, extract their density for a broad range of parameters and map out the b…
Recent experiments have revealed the formation of stable droplets in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates. This surprising result has been explained by the stabilization given by quantum fluctuations. We study in detail the properties of a BEC in the presence of quantum stabilization. The ground-state phase diagram presents three main regimes: mean-field regime, in which the quantum correction is perturbative, droplet regime, in which quantum stabilization is crucial, and a multi-stable regime. In the absence of a multi-stable region, the condensate undergoes a crossover from the mean-field to th…
Ultradilute quantum droplets are intriguing new state of matter, in which the attractive mean-field force can be balanced by the repulsive force from quantum fluctuations to avoid collapse. Here, we present a microscopic theory of ultradilute quantum droplets in three-, one- and two-dimensional two-component Bose-Bose mixtures, by generalizing the conventional Bogoliubov theory to include the bosonic pairing arising from the interspecies attraction. Our pairing theory is fully equivalent to a variational approach and hence gives an upper bound for the energy of quantum droplets. In three dimen…
We study the statics and dynamics of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) droplet bound by inter-species contact interaction in a trapped non-dipolar BEC. Our findings are demonstrated in terms of stability plots of a dipolar 164Dy droplet bound in a trapped non-dipolar 87Rb BEC with a variable number of 164Dy atoms and the inter-species scattering length. A trapped non-dipolar BEC of a fixed number of atoms can only bind a dipolar droplet containing atoms less than a critical number for the inter-species scattering length between two critical values. The shape and size (statics) as well a…
We look into dark solitons in a quasi-1D dipolar Bose gas and in a quantum droplet. We derive the analytical solitonic solution of a Gross-Pitaevskii-like equation accounting for beyond mean-field effects. The results show there is a certain critical value of the dipolar interactions, for which the width of a motionless soliton diverges. Moreover, there is a peculiar solution of the motionless soliton with a non-zero density minimum. We also present the energy spectrum of these solitons with an additional excitation subbranch appearing. Finally, we perform a series of numerical experiments rev…
An ultradilute quantum droplet is a self-bound liquid-like state recently observed in ultracold Bose-Einstein condensates. In all previous theoretical studies, it is described by a phenomenological low-energy effective theory, termed as the extended Gross\textendash Pitaevskii equation. Here, we microscopically derive the Gross\textendash Pitaevskii equation for the condensate and also for a pairing field in an inhomogeneous quantum droplet realized by Bose-Bose mixtures with attractive inter-species interaction. We show that the inclusion of the pairing field is essential, in order to have a …
We study the beyond-mean-field corrections to the energy of a dipolar Bose gas confined to two dimensions by a box potential with dipoles oriented in plane. At a critical strength of the dipolar interaction the system becomes unstable on the mean field level. We find that the ground state of the gas is strongly influenced by the corrections, leading to formation of a self-bound droplet, in analogy to the free space case. Properties of the droplet state can be found by minimizing the extended Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional. In the limit of strong confinement we show analytically that the co…
Motivated by the recent experiments [H. Kadau et al., Nature (London) 530, 194 (2016); I. Ferrier-Barbut et al., arXiv:1601.03318] and theoretical prediction (F. Wächtler and L. Santos, arXiv:1601.04501), the ground state of a dysprosium Bose-Einstein condensate with strong dipole-dipole interaction is studied using the path-integral Monte Carlo method. It is shown that quantum fluctuation can stabilize the condensate against dipolar collapse.
Quantum droplets are small clusters of atoms self-bound by the balance of attractive and repulsive forces. Here we report on the observation of a novel type of droplets, solely stabilized by contact interactions in a mixture of two Bose-Einstein condensates. We demonstrate that they are several orders of magnitude more dilute than liquid helium by directly measuring their size and density via in situ imaging. Moreover, by comparison to a single-component condensate, we show that quantum many-body effects stabilize them against collapse. We observe that droplets require a minimum atom number to…
In this work, we present the study of the stationary structures and the breathing mode behavior of a two-dimensional self-bound binary Bose droplet. We employ an analytical approach using a variational ansatz with a super-Gaussian trial order parameter and compare it with the numerical solutions of the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that the super-Gaussian is superior to the often used Gaussian ansatz in describing the stationary and dynamical properties of the system. We find that for sufficiently large non-rotating droplets the breathing mode is energetically favourable compared…
We study the stability of a zero temperature mixture of attractively interacting degenerate bosons and spin-polarized fermions in the absence of confinement. We demonstrate that higher order corrections to the standard mean-field energy can lead to a formation of Bose-Fermi liquid droplets -- self-bound systems in three-dimensional space. The stability analysis of the homogeneous case is supported by numerical simulations of finite systems by explicit inclusion of surface effects. We discuss the experimental feasibility of formation of quantum droplets and indicate the main obstacle -- inelast…
The properties of 3D Bose-Einstein condensate have been studied with variational and numerical methods. In the variational approach, we use the super-Gaussian trial function, and it is demonstrated that this trial function gives a good approach for the descriptions of the quantum droplets. The analytical equations for the variational parameters are obtained. The frequency of small oscillations of quantum droplets near the equilibrium position is estimated. It is also found that periodic modulation of the coupling constants leads to the resonance oscillations of the quantum droplets parameters …
Quantum scattering of droplets by wells and barriers in one-dimensional Bose-Bose mixtures
Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences S. A. Azimov Physical-Technical Institute（乌兹别克斯坦科学院萨·阿·阿齐莫夫物理技术研究所）；National University of Uzbekistan named after Mirzo Ulugbek（米尔佐·乌鲁格别克国立大学）
Rabi-coupling-induced three-component quantum droplet in ultracold Bose gases
Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院物理研究所凝聚态物理国家实验室）；School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院大学物理科学学院）；Department of Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong（香港中文大学物理系）
We have theoretically investigated the structure of spinning self-bound droplets made of $^{41}$K-$^{87}$Rb Bose mixture by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation including beyond-mean-field correction in the Lee-Huang-Yang form. The structure and energetics of vortex formation in the self-bound mixture have been elucidated, showing that the formation of linear vortices in the heavier species is energetically favoured over other configurations. A fake (partially filled) core develops as a consequence in the other species, resulting in a hole which might be imaged in experiments. The interplay b…
Quantum droplets are ultradilute liquid states which emerge from the competitive interplay of two Hamiltonian terms, the mean-field energy and beyond-mean-field correction, in a weakly interacting binary Bose gas. We relate the formation of droplets in symmetric and asymmetric two-component one-dimensional boson systems to the modulational instability of a spatially uniform state driven by the beyond-mean-field term. Asymmetry between the components may be caused by their unequal populations or unequal intra-component interaction strengths. Stability of both symmetric and asymmetric droplets i…
Ultracold dipolar droplets have been realized in a series of ground-breaking experiments, where the stability of the droplet state is attributed to beyond-mean-field effects in the form of the celebrated Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) correction. We scrutinize the dipolar droplet states in a one-dimensional context using a combination of analytical and numerical approaches, and identify experimentally viable parameters for accessing our findings for future experiments. In particular we identify regimes of stability in the restricted geometry, finding multiple roton instabilities as well as regions suppo…
We analyze some issues related to the stability and free expansion of a one-dimensional logarithmic Bose-Einstein condensate, particularly its eventual relation to the formation of quantum droplet-type configurations. We prove that the corresponding properties, such as the energy of the associated N-body ground state, differ substantially with respect to its three-dimensional counterpart. Consequently, the free velocity expansion also shows differences with respect to the three-dimensional system when logarithmic interactions are taken into account. The one-dimensional logarithmic condensate t…
