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arXiv:2305.12069 · New Journal of Physics

Z n symmetry broken supersolid in spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensates

Ze-Hong Guo, Qizhong Zhu

Published Nov 29, 2024• 2 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Abstract Supersolid is an exotic state of matter characterized by both superfluid properties and periodic particle density modulation, due to spontaneous breaking of U(1) gauge symmetry and spatial translation symmetry, respectively. For conventional supersolids, continuous translation symmetry breaking is accompanied by one gapless Goldstone mode in the excitation spectra. An interesting question naturally arises: what is the consequence of breaking discrete translation symmetry for supersolids? In this work, we study the consequence of discrete symmetry breaking in a Z n supersolid resulting from spontaneous breaking of a discrete Z n symmetry, or equivalently, a discrete translation symmetry. This Z n supersolid is realized in the stripe phase of spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensate under an external periodic potential with period 1 / n of intrinsic stripe period. For n ⩾ 2 , there are n degenerate ground states with spontaneously broken lattice translation symmetry. The low-energy excitations of Z n supersolid include a pseudo-Goldstone mode, whose excitation gap at long wavelength limit is found to decrease rapidly with n. We further numerically show that, when confined in a harmonic trap, a spin-dependent perturbation can result in the transition between degenerate ground states of Z n supersolid. With the integer n tunable using the experimental technique of generating subwavelength optical lattice, the Z n supersolid proposed here offers a cold atom platform to simulate physics related with generic Z n symmetry breaking in a highly controllable setting.

DOI
10.1088/1367-2630/ad98b5

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Abstract Supersolid is an exotic state of matter characterized by both superfluid properties and periodic particle density modulation, due to spontaneous breaking of U(1) gauge symmetry and spatial translation symmetry, respectively. For conventional supersolids, continuous translation symmetry breaking is accompanied by one gapless Goldstone mode in the excitation spectra. An interesting question naturally arises: what is the consequence of breaking discrete translation symmetry for supersolids? In this work, we study the consequence of discrete symmetry breaking in a Z n supersolid resulting from spontaneous breaking of a discrete Z n symmetry, or equivalently, a discrete translation symmetry. This Z n supersolid is realized in the stripe phase of spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensate under an external periodic potential with period 1 / n of intrinsic stripe period. For n ⩾ 2 , there are n degenerate ground states with spontaneously broken lattice translation symmetry. The low-energy excitations of Z n supersolid include a pseudo-Goldstone mode, whose excitation gap at long wavelength limit is found to decrease rapidly with n. We further numerically show that, when confined in a harmonic trap, a spin-dependent perturbation can result in the transition between degenerate ground states of Z n supersolid. With the integer n tunable using the experimental technique of generating subwavelength optical lattice, the Z n supersolid proposed here offers a cold atom platform to simulate physics related with generic Z n symmetry breaking in a highly controllable setting.
Significant experimental progress has been made recently for observing long-sought supersolidlike states in Bose-Einstein condensates, where spatial translational symmetry is spontaneously broken by anisotropic interactions to form a stripe order. Meanwhile, the superfluid stripe ground state was also observed by applying a weak optical lattice that forces the symmetry breaking. Despite the similarity of the ground states, here we show that these two symmetry breaking mechanisms can be distinguished by their collective excitation spectra. In contrast to gapless Goldstone modes of the spontaneous stripe state, we propose that the excitation spectra of the forced stripe phase can provide direct experimental evidence for the gapped pseudo-Goldstone modes. We characterize the pseudo-Goldstone mode of such lattice-induced stripe phase through its excitation spectrum and static structure factor. Our work may pave the way for exploring spontaneous and forced or approximate symmetry breaking mechanisms in different physical systems.
Supersolidity is deeply connected with the emergence of Goldstone modes, reflecting the spontaneous breaking of both phase and translational symmetry. Here, we propose accessible signatures of these modes in harmonically trapped spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates, where supersolidity appears in the form of stripes. By suddenly changing the trapping frequency, an axial breathing oscillation is generated, whose behavior changes drastically at the critical Raman coupling. Above the transition, a single mode of hybridized density and spin nature is excited, while below it, we predict a beating effect signaling the excitation of a Goldstone spin-dipole mode. We further provide evidence for the Goldstone mode associated with the translational motion of stripes. Our results open up new perspectives for probing supersolid properties in experimentally relevant configurations with both symmetric as well as highly asymmetric intraspecies interactions.
The phase diagram of a Bose-Einstein condensate with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling includes a stripe phase with supersolid features. In this work we develop a perturbation approach to study the ground state and the Bogoliubov modes of this phase, holding for small values of the Raman coupling. We obtain analytical predictions for the most relevant observables (including the periodicity of stripes, sound velocities, compressibility, and magnetic susceptibility) which are in excellent agreement with the exact (non perturbative) numerical results, obtained for significantly large values of the coupling. We further unveil the nature of the two gapless Bogoliubov modes in the long-wavelength limit. We find that the spin branch of the spectrum, corresponding in this limit to the dynamics of the relative phase between the two spin components, describes a translation of the fringes of the equilibrium density profile, thereby providing the crystal Goldstone mode typical of a supersolid configuration. Finally, using sum-rule arguments, we show that the superfluid density can be experimentally accessed by measuring the ratio of the sound velocities parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the spin-orbit coupling.
Supersolid is a special state of matter with both superfluid properties and spontaneous modulation of particle density. In this paper we focus on the supersolid stripe phase realized in a spin-orbit-coupled Bose-Einstein condensate and explore the properties of a class of metastable supersolids. In particular, we study a one-dimensional supersolid whose characteristic wave number kkk (magnitude of wave vector) deviates from km{k}_{m}km​, i.e., the one in the ground state. In other words, the period of density modulation is shorter or longer than the one in the ground state. We find that this class of supersolids can still be stable if their wave numbers fall in the range kc1<k<kc2{k}_{c1}<k<{k}_{c2}kc1​<k<kc2​, with two thresholds kc1{k}_{c1}kc1​ and kc2{k}_{c2}kc2​. Stripes with kkk outside this range suffer from dynamical instability with a complex Bogoliubov excitation spectrum at long wavelength. Experimentally, these stripes with kkk different from km{k}_{m}km​ are accessible by exciting the longitudinal spin dipole mode, resulting in temporal oscillation of the stripe period as well as kkk. Within the mean-field Gross-Pitaevskii theory, we numerically confirm that for a large enough amplitude of spin dipole oscillation, the stripe states become unstable through breaking periodicity, in qualitative agreement with the existence of thresholds of kkk for stable stripes. Our work extends the concept of supersolid and uncovers an unconventional class of metastable supersolids to explore.
The phase diagram of a Bose-Einstein condensate with Raman-induced spin-orbit coupling includes a stripe phase with supersolid features. In this work we develop a perturbation approach to study the ground state and the Bogoliubov modes of this phase, holding for small values of the Raman coupling. We obtain analytical predictions for the most relevant observables (including the periodicity of stripes, sound velocities, compressibility, and magnetic susceptibility) which are in excellent agreement with the exact (non perturbative) numerical results, obtained for significantly large values of the coupling. We further unveil the nature of the two gapless Bogoliubov modes in the long-wavelength limit. We find that the spin branch of the spectrum, corresponding in this limit to the dynamics of the relative phase between the two spin components, describes a translation of the fringes of the equilibrium density profile, thereby providing the crystal Goldstone mode typical of a supersolid configuration. Finally, using sum-rule arguments, we show that the superfluid density can be experimentally accessed by measuring the ratio of the sound velocities parallel and perpendicular to the direction of the spin-orbit coupling.
Motivated by a recent experiment [L. Chomaz et al., Nat. Phys. 14, 442 (2018)], we perform numerical simulations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in a tubular, periodic confinement at T=0T=0T=0 within density functional theory, where the beyond-mean-field correction to the ground-state energy is included in the local density approximation. We study the excitation spectrum of the system by solving the corresponding Bogoliubov--de Gennes equations. The calculated spectrum shows a roton minimum, and the roton gap decreases by reducing the effective scattering length. As the roton gap disappears, the system spontaneously develops a periodic linear structure formed by denser clusters of atomic dipoles immersed in a dilute superfluid background. This structure shows the hallmarks of a supersolid system, i.e., (i) a finite nonclassical translational inertia along the tube axis and (ii) the appearance of two gapless modes, i.e., a phonon mode associated with density fluctuations and resulting from the translational discrete symmetry of the system, and a Nambu-Goldstone gapless mode corresponding to phase fluctuations, resulting from the spontaneous breaking of the gauge symmetry. A further decrease in the scattering length eventually leads to the formation of a periodic linear array of self-bound droplets.