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arXiv:2407.03505 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Polarons in supersolids: Path-integral treatment of an impurity in a one-dimensional dipolar supersolid

Laurent H. A. Simons, Michiel Wouters, Jacques Tempere

Published Feb 28, 2025• 2 citations
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Abstract

The supersolid phase of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate has an intriguing excitation spectrum displaying a band structure. Here, the dressing of an impurity in a one-dimensional dipolar supersolid with the excitations of the supersolid is studied. The ground-state energy of the supersolid polaron is calculated using a variational path integral approach, which obtained accurate results for other polaron systems within the Bogoliubov and Fr\"ohlich approximations. A divergence is observed at the superfluid-supersolid phase transition. The polaron radius is also computed, showing that, as a function of impurity-atom interactions, the polaron can become localized to a single droplet, behaving like a small solid-state polaron.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.111.054524

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The supersolid phase of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate has an intriguing excitation spectrum displaying a band structure. Here, the dressing of an impurity in a one-dimensional dipolar supersolid with the excitations of the supersolid is studied. The ground-state energy of the supersolid polaron is calculated using a variational path integral approach, which obtained accurate results for other polaron systems within the Bogoliubov and Fr"ohlich approximations. A divergence is observed at the superfluid-supersolid phase transition. The polaron radius is also computed, showing that, as a function of impurity-atom interactions, the polaron can become localized to a single droplet, behaving like a small solid-state polaron.
Bose-Einstein condensation is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon where cooling down a gas of bosonic particles to ultracold temperatures results in the macroscopic occupation of the lowest energy state. This new state of matter has been used as a quantum simulator of many-body phenomena and theories due to its extreme tunability and controllability. An important example of such a many-body system is the polaron which, in its most general form, describes an impurity interacting with a bosonic bath. In the case of ultracold Bose gases, the impurity interacts with and is dressed by the Bogoliubov excitations of the gas. A supersolid is a state of matter that exhibits both superfluidity and crystalline order, which are seemingly irreconcilable properties. It has recently been observed in dipolar ultracold Bose gases, where it arises from the long-range anisotropic dipole-dipole interactions, and also other systems. The breaking of both translational symmetry and gauge symmetry results in multiple excitation modes in the supersolid. In this thesis, the charged Bose polaron and an impurity in a dipolar ultracold Bose gas exhibiting supersolidity (the supersolid Bose polaron) are studied. The ground-state properties of the charged Bose polaron are discussed using a variational path-integral approach. Absorption spectroscopy is proposed as a probe of the charged Bose polaron, and the optical response is studied for weak impurity-boson interactions. Next, the one-dimensional dipolar supersolid Bose polaron is investigated where multiple approaches are used for the derivation of the ground-state properties. The study of the polaron problem with a supersolid background is of particular interest because of the rich excitation spectrum of the supersolid. Interesting phenomena, such as possible localization of the polaron to a single droplet for strong interactions, are observed. The absorption spectrum of a charged impurity in the supersolid is also derived, which, because of the different excitation modes of the supersolid, shows multiple peaks from which information such as the superfluid fraction may be obtained.
The system of a charged impurity in an interacting Bose gas has gained significant attention due to the long-range ion-atom interactions and the study of transport properties. Here, the ground state energy of a charged Bose polaron is calculated within the Bogoliubov approximation for both the Fröhlich and beyond-Fröhlich Hamiltonians using a generalized Feynman variational path-integral approach, which obtained accurate results for other polaron problems. The generalized approach, which was used to improve the energy result for the neutral polaron, has resulted in a minor improvement, indicating that Feynman's approach is sufficient when the impurity-boson interaction is long-range. Beyond-Fröhlich corrections results in the emergence of a divergence in the polaronic energy indicating a transition between the repulsive and attractive polaron regime. The path-integral approach with the beyond-Fröhlich Hamiltonian is also compared to a field-theory calculation from Christensen et al, 2021. The validity of the Bogoliubov approximation is investigated. The optical absorption has also been calculated within the Bogoliubov approximation for weak ion-atom interactions, and the effect of finite temperature has been studied. We show that the coupling of the ion to an oscillating external electric field offers a straigtforward experimental probe for the charged polaron in a Bose gas, different from but complementary to existing spectroscopic techniques.
The description of an impurity atom in a Bose-Einstein condensate can be cast in the form of Fr\"ohlich's polaron Hamiltonian, where the Bogoliubov excitations play the role of the phonons. An expression for the corresponding polaronic coupling strength is derived, relating the coupling strength to the scattering lengths, the trap size and the number of Bose condensed atoms. This allows to identify several approaches to reach the strong-coupling limit for the quantum gas polarons, whereas this limit was hitherto experimentally inaccessible in solids. We apply Feynman's path-integral method to calculate for all coupling strengths the polaronic shift in the free energy and the increase in the effective mass. The effect of temperature on these quantities is included in the description. We find similarities to the acoustic polaron results and indications of a transition between free polarons and self-trapped polarons. The prospects, based on the current theory, of investigating the polaron physics with ultracold gases are discussed for lithium atoms in a sodium condensate.
We study the behavior of the excitation spectrum across the quantum phase transition from a superfluid to a supersolid phase of a dipolar Bose gas confined to a one-dimensional geometry. Including the leading beyond-mean-field effects within an effective Hamiltonian, the analysis is based on Bogoliubov theory with several order parameters accounting for the superfluid as well as solid structure. We find fast convergence of the ground-state energy in the supersolid with the number of order parameters and demonstrate a stable excitation spectrum with two Goldstone modes and an amplitude mode in the low-energy regime. Our results suggest that there exists an experimentally achievable parameter regime for dysprosium atoms, where the supersolid phase exhibits a stable excitation spectrum in the thermodynamic limit and the transition into the supersolid phase is of second order driven by the roton instability.
The system of a charged impurity in an interacting Bose gas has gained significant attention due to the long-range ion-atom interactions and the study of transport properties. Here, the ground-state energy of a charged Bose polaron is calculated within the Bogoliubov approximation using a generalized Feynman variational path-integral approach, which obtained accurate results for other polaron problems. We find that compared to other existing approaches, our approach gives similar and improved results while being numerically less intensive. Optical absorption, which is a standard tool to study the solid-state polaron, is introduced here as a probing method for the Bose polaron. It is calculated within the Bogoliubov approximation for weak ion-atom interactions, and the effect of finite temperature is studied. We show that the coupling of the ion to an oscillating external electric field offers a straightforward experimental probe for the charged polaron in a Bose gas, different from but complementary to existing spectroscopic techniques.
We consider a polaronic model in which impurity fermions interact with background bosons in a dipolar condensate. The polaron in this model emerges as an impurity dressed with a cloud of phonons of the dipolar condensate, which, due to the competition between the attractive and repulsive parts of the dipole-dipole interaction, obey an anisotropic dispersion spectrum. We study how this anisotropy affects the \ifmmode \check{C}\else \v{C}\fi{}erenkov-like emission of Bogoliubov phonon modes, which can be directly verified by experiments in which a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate moves against an obstacle. We also study the spectral function of impurity fermions, which is directly accessible to the momentum-resolved rf spectroscopy in cold atoms.