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arXiv:2003.06408 · Physical Review A

Persistent currents in toroidal dipolar supersolids

M. Nilsson Tengstrand, David Boholm, Rashi Sachdeva, J. Bengtsson, S. M. Reimann

Published Jan 15, 2021• 55 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate the rotational properties of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a toroidal geometry. Studying the ground states in the rotating frame and at fixed angular momenta, we observe that the condensate acts in distinctly different ways depending on whether it is in the superfluid or in the supersolid phase. We find that intriguingly, the toroidal dipolar condensate can support a supersolid persistent current which occurs at a local minimum in the ground state energy as a function of angular momentum, where the state has a vortex solution in the superfluid component of the condensate. The decay of this state is prevented by a barrier that in part consists of states where a fraction of the condensate mimics solid-body rotation in a direction opposite to that of the vortex. Furthermore, we find that superfluid condensates may enter the supersolid phase when forced to take angular momentum. Last, the rotating toroidal supersolid shows hysteretic behavior that is qualitatively different depending on the superfluid fraction of the condensate.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.103.013313

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We investigate the rotational properties of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate trapped in a toroidal geometry. Studying the ground states in the rotating frame and at fixed angular momenta, we observe that the condensate acts in distinctly different ways depending on whether it is in the superfluid or in the supersolid phase. We find that intriguingly, the toroidal dipolar condensate can support a supersolid persistent current which occurs at a local minimum in the ground state energy as a function of angular momentum, where the state has a vortex solution in the superfluid component of the condensate. The decay of this state is prevented by a barrier that in part consists of states where a fraction of the condensate mimics solid-body rotation in a direction opposite to that of the vortex. Furthermore, we find that superfluid condensates may enter the supersolid phase when forced to take angular momentum. Last, the rotating toroidal supersolid shows hysteretic behavior that is qualitatively different depending on the superfluid fraction of the condensate.
Ring-shaped superfluids with weak links provide a perfect environment for studying persistent currents and dynamic stirring protocols. Here, we investigate the effects of a weak-link system on dipolar supersolids. By calculating the ground-state energy at fixed angular momenta, we find that metastable persistent currents may exist in the supersolid phase near the superfluid transition point. When stirring the weak link rapidly enough, we show that vortices can enter the supersolid. These vortex entries cause phase slips, emitting solitonic excitations that interfere with the crystalline structure of the supersolid, leading to a continuous melting and recrystallization of the droplets. Finally, we examine the release of vortex-carrying supersolids from the trap, observing that the released density exhibits a discrete structure associated with the density modulation and a central hole resulting from the vortex core.
We analyze the nucleation of persistent currents in Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold gases confined in a ring. This phenomenon has been recently investigated in an experiment [S. Eckel, J. G. Lee, F. Jendrzejewski, N. Murray, C. W. Clark, C. J. Lobb, W. D. Phillips, M. Edwards, and G. K. Campbell, Nature (London) 506, 200 (2014)], where hysteresis loops have been observed in the activation of quantized persistent currents by rotating weak links. In this work, we demonstrate the existence of three-dimensional stationary currents with nonquantized angular momentum. They are generated by families of solitary waves that exhibit a continuous variation in the angular momentum and provide a bridge between different winding numbers. We show that the size of hysteresis loops is determined by the range of existence within the weak link region of solitary waves which configure the energy barrier preventing phase slips. The barrier vanishes when the critical rotation leads winding number and solitonic states to a matching configuration. At this point, Landau and Feynman criteria for phase slips meet: the fluid flow reaches the local speed of sound, and stationary vortex lines (which are the building blocks of multidimensional solitons) can be excited inside the system.
We theoretically investigate the properties of ultracold dipolar atoms in radially coupled, concentric annular traps created by a potential barrier. The nonrotating ground-state phases are investigated across the superfluid-supersolid phase transition, revealing a particle imbalance between the two rings and a preferential density modulation in the outer ring in the absence of rotation. Near the phase transition on the superfluid side, applying rotation can induce density modulations in either ring, depending on the angular momentum and barrier strength. For low angular momentum, such rotation-induced density modulation forms in the outer ring, while for high angular momentum and weak barriers, it emerges in the inner ring. Rotation can lead to persistent currents and the nucleation of a vortex residing either at the center (central vortex) or at the ring junction (Josephson vortex). Josephson vortices can also form at the junctions of the localized density sites induced by rotation in the inner ring, a behavior that is unique to our system. By switching off the trap and allowing the system to expand, distinct interference patterns emerge, which can be analyzed to identify and distinguish between various vortex configurations, and thus can be observed in current state-of-the-art experiments.
We study the properties of singly quantized linear vortices in the supersolid phase of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate at zero-temperature modeling 164Dy^{164}\mathrm{Dy}164Dy atoms. The system is extended in the $x\text{\ensuremath{-}}y$ plane and confined by a harmonic trap in the polarization direction zzz. Our study is based on a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We characterize the ground state of the system in terms of spatial order and superfluid fraction and compare the properties of a single vortex and of a vortex dipole in the superfluid phase (SFP) and in the supersolid phase (SSP). At variance with a vortex in the SFP, which is free to move in the superfluid, a vortex in the SSP is localized at the interstitial sites and does not move freely. We have computed the energy barrier for motion from an equilibrium site to another. The fact that the vortex is submitted to a periodic potential has a dramatic effect on the dynamics of a vortex dipole made of two counter-rotating parallel vortices; instead of rigidly translating as in the SFP, the vortex and antivortex approach each other by a series of jumps from one site to another until they annihilate in a very short time and their energy is transferred to bulk excitations.
A repulsively interacting Bose-Einstein condensate on a ring is well known to show persistent currents. For attractive interactions, however, a bound state may form that renders the rotation classical. Here we show that in a multiply connected confinement, the strong in-plane attraction of an condensate can form stacks of ring-shaped density lumps which may coherently overlap to form a supersolid along the azimuthal symmetry axis of the system. Intriguingly, the functional behavior of the energy–angular-momentum dispersion of the antidipolar ring condensate differs from that of a usual repulsive superfluid. The periodic maxima between persistent flow and the nonrotating ground state flatten significantly and the typical pronounced cusps in the energy dispersion also occur in the rotationally symmetric supersolid state. A weak link results in the reduction of this minimum, shifting it to smaller angular momenta. With an asymmetric link potential one can selectively induce superfluid and rigid-body rotation in different layers within the same system. This intriguing setup offers new perspectives for atomtronics applications.
We study a Bose-Einstein condensate of 52Cr^{52}\mathrm{Cr}52Cr atoms confined in a toroidal trap with a variable strength of sss-wave contact interactions. We analyze the effects of the anisotropic nature of the dipolar interaction by considering the magnetization axis to be perpendicular to the trap symmetry axis. In the absence of a central repulsive barrier, when the trap is purely harmonic, the effect of reducing the scattering length is a tuning of the geometry of the system from a pancake-shaped condensate when it is large to a cigar-shaped condensate for small scattering lengths. For a condensate in a toroidal trap, the interaction in combination with the central repulsive Gaussian barrier produces an azimuthal dependence of the particle density for a fixed radial distance. We find that along the magnetization direction the density decreases as the scattering length is reduced but presents two symmetric density peaks in the perpendicular axis. For even lower values of the scattering length we observe that the system undergoes a dipolar-induced symmetry breaking phenomenon. The whole density becomes concentrated in one of the peaks, resembling an origin-displaced cigar-shaped condensate. In this context we also analyze stationary vortex states and their associated velocity fields, finding that these also show a strong azimuthal dependence for small scattering lengths. The expectation value of the angular momentum along the zzz direction provides a qualitative measure of the difference between the velocity in the different density peaks.