We theoretically investigate the ground states and the spectrum of elementary excitations across the superfluid to droplet crystallization transition of an oblate dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. We systematically identify regimes where spontaneous rotational symmetry breaking leads to the emergence of a supersolid phase with characteristic collective excitations, such as the Higgs amplitude mode. Furthermore, we study the dynamics across the transition and show how these supersolids can be realized with standard protocols in state-of-the-art experiments.
Supersolidity -- a quantum-mechanical phenomenon characterized by the presence of both superfluidity and crystalline order -- was initially envisioned in the context of bulk solid helium, as a possible answer to the question of whether a solid could have superfluid properties. While supersolidity has not been observed in solid helium (despite much effort), ultracold atomic gases have provided a fundamentally new approach, recently enabling the observation and study of supersolids with dipolar atoms. However, unlike the proposed phenomena in helium, these gaseous systems have so far only shown …
We calculate the mean-field phase diagram of a zero-temperature, binary Bose mixture on a square optical lattice, where one species possesses a non-negligible dipole moment. Remarkably, this system exhibits supersolidity for anomalously weak dipolar interaction strengths, which are readily accessible with current experimental capabilities. The supersolid phases are robust, in that they occupy large regions in the parameter space. Further, we identify a first-order quantum phase transition between supersolid and superfluid phases. Our results demonstrate the rich features of the dipolar Bose mi…
Breakthrough experiments have newly explored the fascinating physics of dipolar quantum droplets and supersolids. The recent realization of dipolar mixtures opens further intriguing possibilities. We show that under rather general conditions, the presence of a second component catalyzes droplet nucleation and supersolidity in an otherwise unmodulated condensate. Droplet catalyzation in miscible mixtures, which may occur even for a surprisingly small impurity doping, results from a local roton instability triggered by the doping-dependent modification of the effective dipolar strength. The cata…
We explore spatial symmetry breaking of a dipolar Bose Einstein condensate in the thermodynamic limit and reveal a critical point in the phase diagram at which crystallization occurs via a second order phase transition. This behavior is traced back to the significant effects of quantum fluctuations in dipolar condensates, which moreover stabilize a new supersolid phase, namely a regular honeycomb pattern with maximal modulational contrast and near-perfect superfluidity.
We investigate a system of dipolar bosons in an optical lattice with local two and three-body interactions. Using the mean-field theory approach, we obtain the ground state phase diagram of the extended Bose-Hubbard (EBH) model with both repulsive and attractive three-body interac- tions. We show that the additional three-body on-site interaction has strong effects on the phase diagram especially on the supersolid phase. Positive values of the three-body interaction lead to the enhancement of the gapped phases at densities larger than unity by reducing the supersolid region. However, a small a…
We investigate topological supersolidity of dipolar Fermi gases in a spin-dependent 2D optical lattice. Numerical results show that the topological supersolid states can be synthesized via the combination of topological superfluid states with the stripe order, where the topological superfluid states generated with dipolar interaction possess the $Δ_{x}+iΔ_{y}$ order, and it is of D class topological classification. By adjusting the ratio between hopping amplitude $t_{x}/t_{y}$ and interaction strength $U$ with dipole orientation $ϕ\approx \fracπ{4}$, the system will undergo phase transitions a…
We present a theory for the emergence of a supersolid state in a cigar-shaped dipolar quantum Bose gas. Our approach is based on a reduced three-dimensional (3D) theory, where the condensate wavefunction is decomposed into an axial field and a transverse part described variationally. This provides an accurate fully 3D description that is specific to the regime of current experiments and efficient to compute. We apply this theory to understand the phase diagram for a gas in an infinite tube potential. We find that the supersolid transition has continuous and discontinuous regions as the average…
Two-component dipolar condensates are now experimentally producible, and we theoretically investigate the nature of supersolidity in this system. We predict the existence of a binary supersolid state in which the two components form a series of alternating domains, producing an immiscible double supersolid. Remarkably, we find that a dipolar component can even induce supersolidity in a nondipolar component. In stark contrast to single-component dipolar supersolids, alternating-domain supersolids do not require quantum stabilization, and the number of crystal sites is not strictly limited by th…
We calculate the ground states of a dipolar Bose gas confined in an infinite tube potential. We use the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation theory and present a novel numerical method to efficiently obtain solutions. A key feature of this method is an analytic result for a truncated dipole-dipole interaction potential that enables the long-ranged interactions to be accurately evaluated within a unit cell. Our focus is on the transition of the ground state to a crystal driven by dipole-dipole interactions as the short ranged interaction strength is varied. We find that the transition is continuo…
We study the phase diagram of a dipolar fermi gas at half-filling in a cubic optical lattice with dipole moments aligned along the z-axis. The anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction leads to the competition between pz-wave superfluid and nematic charge-density-wave (CDW) orders at low temperatures. We find that the superfluid phase survives with weak interactions and the CDW phase dominates with strong interactions. In between, the supersolid phase appears as a balance between superfluid and CDW orders. The superfluid density is anisotropic in the supersolid and superfluid phases. In the CDW ph…
Point defects in self-assembled crystals, such as vacancies and interstitials, attract each other and form stable clusters. This leads to a phase separation between perfect crystalline structures and defect conglomerates at low temperatures. We propose a method that allows one to tune the effective interactions between point defects from attractive to repulsive by means of external periodic fields. In the quantum regime, this allows one to engineer strongly-correlated many-body phases. We exemplify the microscopic mechanism by considering dipolar quantum gases of ground state polar molecules a…
We theoretically investigate supersolidity in three-dimensional dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates. We focus on the role of trap geometry in determining the dimensionality of the resulting droplet arrays, which range from one-dimensional to zigzag, through to two-dimensional supersolids in circular traps. Supersolidity is well established in one-dimensional arrays, and may be just as favorable in two-dimensional arrays provided that one appropriately scales the atom number to the trap volume. We develop a tractable variational model--which we benchmark against full numerical simulations--and us…
We investigate the novel density distributions acquired by a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensed gas confined in a box potential, with special focus on the effects of supersolidity. Differently from the case of harmonic trapping, the ground state density reveals a strong depletion in the bulk region and an accumulation of atoms near the walls, well separated from the bulk, as a consequence of the competition between the attractive and the repulsive nature of the dipolar force. In a quasi two-dimensional geometry characterized by cylindrical box trapping, we observe the emergence of a ring-like con…
Recent studies on supersolidity in a single-component Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) have relied on the Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) correction for stabilization of self-bound droplets, which however involves a high density inside the droplets, limiting the lifetime of the supersolid. Here we propose a two-component mixture of dipolar and nondipolar BECs, such as an $^{166}$Er-$^{87}$Rb mixture, to create and stabilize a supersolid without the LHY correction, which can suppress the atomic loss and may allow observation of the long-time dynamics of the supersolid. In such a system, supersolidity can be…
In this article we develop the framework to describe Bose-Fermi mixtures of magnetic atoms, focusing on the interaction of bosonic self-bound dipolar quantum droplets with a small number of fermions. We find an attractive interaction potential due to the dipolar interaction with several bound states, which can be occupied by one fermion each, resulting in a very weak back-action on the bosons. We conclude, that these impurities might act as unique probes giving access to inherent properties of dipolar quantum droplets.
We report on the observation of the scissors mode of a single dipolar quantum droplet. The existence of this mode is due to the breaking of the rotational symmetry by the dipole-dipole interaction, which is fixed along an external homogeneous magnetic field. By modulating the orientation of this magnetic field, we introduce a new spectroscopic technique for studying dipolar quantum droplets. This provides a precise probe for interactions in the system allowing to extract a background scattering length for \textsuperscript{164}Dy of $69(4)\,a_0$. Our results establish an analogy between quantum…
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 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…
A supersolid is a counter-intuitive state of matter that combines the frictionless flow of a superfluid with the crystal-like periodic density modulation of a solid. Since the first prediction in the 1950s, experimental efforts to realize this state have focussed mainly on Helium, where supersolidity remains elusive. Recently, supersolidity has also been studied intensively in ultracold quantum gases, and some of its defining properties have been induced in spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) and BECs coupled to two crossed optical cavities. However, the periodicity of the crys…
We study theoretically and experimentally the emergence of supersolid properties in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. The theory reveals a ground state phase diagram with three distinct regimes - a regular Bose-Einstein condensate, incoherent and coherent arrays of quantum droplets. In the latter the droplets are connected by a finite superfluid density, which leads - in addition to the periodic density modulation - to a robust phase coherence throughout the whole system. We further theoretically demonstrate that we are able to dynamically approach the ground state in our experiment and that…
In this paper we develop a theory for an infinitely long droplet state of a zero temperature dipolar bosonic gas. The infinite droplet theory yields simpler equations to solve for the droplet state and its collective excitations. We explore the behavior of infinite droplets using numerical and variational solutions, and demonstrate that it can provide a quantitative description of large finite droplets of the type produced in experiments. We also consider the axial speed of sound and the thermodynamic limit of a dipolar droplet.
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 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 describe and benchmark a method to accurately calculate the quantum droplet states that can be produced from a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate. Our approach also allows us to consider vortex states, where the atoms circulate around the long-axis of the filament shaped droplet. We apply our approach to determine a phase diagram showing where self-bound droplets are stable against evaporation, and to quantify the energetics related to the fission of a vortex droplet into two non-vortex droplets.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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…
Recently achieved two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates open exciting possibilities for the study of mixtures of ultra-dilute quantum liquids. While non-dipolar self-bound mixtures are necessarily miscible with an approximately fixed ratio between the two densities, the density ratio for the dipolar case is free. As a result, self-bound dipolar mixtures present qualitatively novel and much richer physics, characterized by three possible ground-state phases: miscible, symmetric immiscible and asymmetric immiscible, which may in principle occur at any population imbalance. Self-bound i…
We investigate the effects of quantum correlations on dipolar quantum droplets. To this end,we derive self-consistent time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov equations that fairly describe the dynamics of the order parameter, the normal, and anomalous quantum correlations of the droplet. We analyze the density profiles, the critical number of particles, the condensate depletion, and the pair correlation function. Our predictions are compared with very recent experimental and Quantum Monte-Carlo simulations results and excellent agreement is found.
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…
Using a beyond-mean-field model including a Lee-Huang-Yang-type interaction, we demonstrate a supersolid-like spatially-periodic square- and triangular-lattice crystallization of droplets in a polarized dipolar condensate confined by an appropriate three-dimensional (3D) box trap. In this paper we consider a rectangular box (cuboid) trap, a square box (cuboid with two equal sides) trap, a cylindrical box trap and a hexagonal box (hexagonal prism) trap. The droplet lattice is always formed in the $x$-$y$ plane perpendicular to the polarization $z$ direction of dipolar atoms. In contrast to a ha…
We analyze the nucleation of supersolid order out of the superfluid ground state of bosons on the triangular lattice. While the stability of supersolidity against phase separation in this system is by now well established for nearest-neighbor and long-range dipolar interactions, relevant for two-dimensional arrays of ultra-cold polar molecules, here we address directly the nature of the superfluid-to-supersolid transition. Based on symmetry arguments and quantum Monte Carlo simulations, we conclude that this quantum phase transition is driven first-order beyond the line of particle-hole symmet…
We theoretically investigate the droplets formation in a tightly trapped one-dimensional dipolar gas of bosonic atoms. When the strength of the dipolar interaction becomes sufficiently attractive compared to the contact one, we show how a solitonic-like density profile evolves into a liquid-like droplet on increasing the number of particles in the trap. The incipient gas-liquid transition is also signalled by a steep increase of the breathing mode and a change in sign of the chemical potential. Upon a sudden release of the trap, varying the number of trapped atoms and the scattering length, th…
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…
Recently, trapped dipolar gases were observed to form high density droplets in a regime where mean field theory predicts collapse. These droplets present a novel form of equilibrium where quantum fluctuations are critical for stability. So far, the effect of quantum fluctuations have only been considered at zero temperature through the local chemical potential arising from the Lee--Huang--Yang correction. Here, we extend the theory of dipolar droplets to non-zero temperatures using Hartree--Fock--Bogoliubov theory (HFBT), and show that the equilibrium is strongly affected by temperature fluctu…
We calculate the collective excitations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate in the regime where it self-binds into droplets stabilized by quantum fluctuations. We show that the filament-shaped droplets act as a quasi-one-dimensional waveguide along which low angular momentum phonons propagate. The evaporation (unbinding) threshold occurring as the atom number $N$ is reduced to the critical value $N_c$ is associated with a monopole-like excitation going soft as $ε_0\sim(N-N_c)^{1/4}$. Considering the system in the presence of a trapping potential, we quantify the crossover from a trap-bound c…
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…
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 …
We study the effect of beyond-mean-field quantum-fluctuation (QF) Lee-Huang-Yang (LHY) and three-body interactions, with quartic and quintic nonlinearities, respectively, on the formation of a stable self-repulsive (positive scattering length $a$) and a self-attractive (negative $a$) self-bound dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) droplet in free space under the action of two-body contact and dipolar interactions. Previous studies of dipolar droplets considered either the LHY interaction or the three-body interaction, as either of these interactions could stabilize a dipolar BEC droplet agai…
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…
