Ultracold quantum gases with long-range anisotropic interactions host novel exotic phases of matter, such as supersolids, exhibiting both rigid and superfluid characteristics. The impact of this interplay on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of dipolar gases, and in particular its connection with universal turbulent behavior, remains highly unexplored. Here, upon considering a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate of dysprosium atoms being dynamically driven across the supersolid-superfluid phase transition and vice versa, we unveil the emergence of a robust nonequilibrium quasi-steady state. This state displays self-similar momentum distributions exhibiting algebraic decay at large momenta, with scaling exponents supporting the existence of wave turbulence. We demonstrate that supersolidity sustaining higher-lying momenta, associated with the roton minimum, promotes the development of turbulence. Our results provide a stepping stone toward unraveling and exploiting turbulent and self-similar behavior in anisotropically long-range interacting quantum gases amenable in current experiments. Periodic driving of a dysprosium supersolid across its phase transition rapidly induces a robust self-similar turbulent cascade with universal power-law scaling at high momenta. This work establishes supersolids as a versatile platform for probing unconventional quantum turbulence and universal behavior in anisotropic long-range quantum fluids.
Ultracold quantum gases with long-range anisotropic interactions host novel exotic phases of matter, such as supersolids, exhibiting both rigid and superfluid characteristics. The impact of this interplay on the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of dipolar gases, and in particular its connection with universal turbulent behavior, remains highly unexplored. Here, upon considering a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate of dysprosium atoms being dynamically driven across the supersolid-superfluid phase transition and vice versa, we unveil the emergence of a robust nonequilibrium quasi-steady state. This state displays self-similar momentum distributions exhibiting algebraic decay at large momenta, with scaling exponents supporting the existence of wave turbulence. We demonstrate that supersolidity sustaining higher-lying momenta, associated with the roton minimum, promotes the development of turbulence. Our results provide a stepping stone toward unraveling and exploiting turbulent and self-similar behavior in anisotropically long-range interacting quantum gases amenable in current experiments. Periodic driving of a dysprosium supersolid across its phase transition rapidly induces a robust self-similar turbulent cascade with universal power-law scaling at high momenta. This work establishes supersolids as a versatile platform for probing unconventional quantum turbulence and universal behavior in anisotropic long-range quantum fluids.
Abstract Understanding the relaxation dynamics of isolated quantum systems remains a central challenge in nonequilibrium physics. In this short review, we discuss recent experimental and theoretical advances in universal dynamics of turbulent Bose gases, with particular emphasis on nonthermal fixed points and wave turbulence in our experimental system at the São Carlos Institute of Physics of the University of São Paulo. We highlight the emergence of self-similar scaling behavior and its connection to particle and energy transport across momentum scales. In addition, we discuss an approach in which a differential equation has a universal scaling solution, providing a practical framework for extracting universal exponents from limited regions of the momentum distribution. Furthermore, we recap experimental observations of direct and inverse cascades in a three–dimensional trapped Bose–Einstein condensate, revealing distinct relaxation stages governed by universal scaling laws. These results demonstrate that turbulence plays a key role in far–from–equilibrium dynamics, offering a unified perspective on transport processes and thermalization in quantum many–body systems.
We study the emergence of distinctly subdiffusive scaling in the vicinity of an anomalous nonthermal fixed point, which reflects spatio-temporally self-similar scaling dynamics, in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose gas in the superfluid phase. In this regime, the far-from-equilibrium dynamics is governed by ensembles of quantum vortices. Mutual annihilation of vortices and antivortices drives coarsening, leading to the observed scaling behavior and an algebraically growing mean inter-defect distance over time. Introducing dipolar interactions provides additional control over the anisotropy and long-range character of the interactions. This control, combined with various parameter regimes and initial conditions, allows us to explore the universality of the subdiffusive scaling near the anomalous nonthermal fixed point. Scaling exponents are extracted from occupation-number spectra, the temporal evolution of inter-defect distances, and the decay of the total vortex number. At late times, compressible excitations of the background condensate grow due to ongoing vortex-antivortex annihilation, resulting in a crossover toward diffusion-type scaling near the Gaussian nonthermal fixed point. The observed temporal scaling depends only weakly on the strength and anisotropy of the dipolar interactions, demonstrating the universality of both anomalous and diffusion-type nonthermal fixed points. Nevertheless, the dipolar case exhibits qualitatively distinct vortex-clustering behavior. In contrast to non-dipolar gases, roton excitations in anisotropic, dipolar interactions appear to suppress same-sign vortex clustering, favoring the formation of vortex dipoles and maximizing the separation between vortices of equal sign. For pure contact interaction, we additionally observe spatial scaling characteristics consistent with Kraichnan--Kolmogorov turbulence. During a universal interval, in which the characteristic length scale associated with the inter-defect distance exhibits subdiffusive power-law growth, the moments of the superfluid velocity circulation around a square contour scale as predicted from classical turbulence theory. Higher-order moments of the velocity circulation reveal intermittent deviations, which are found to be consistent with values measured in fully developed classical turbulence. Notably, the subdiffusive coarsening clearly deviates from values known in classical systems. Collectively, these results provide strong evidence for the universality of the subdiffusive scaling near the anomalous nonthermal fixed point and establish a direct connection to decaying quantum turbulence cascades, highlighting the relevance of nonthermal fixed points in turbulence theory.
We observe an inverse turbulent-wave cascade, from small to large length scales, in a driven homogeneous 2D Bose gas. Starting with an equilibrium condensate, we drive the gas isotropically on a length scale much smaller than its size, and observe a nonthermal population of modes with wavelengths larger than the drive one. At long drive times, the gas exhibits a steady nonthermal momentum distribution. At length scales increasing from the drive one to the system size, this distribution features in turn: (i) a power-law spectrum with an exponent close to the analytical result for a particle cascade in weak-wave turbulence, and (ii) a spectrum reminiscent of a nonthermal fixed point associated with universal coarsening in an isolated 2D gas. In further experiments, based on anisotropic driving, we reveal the complete qualitative picture of how the steady-state cascade forms.
This thesis discusses the experiments on 2D dipolar Bose gas of ultracold erbium atoms. Long-range and anisotropic dipole-dipole interaction induces complex orders in quantum many-body systems. Highly magnetic lanthanide atoms such as dysprosium and erbium have the largest magnetic moment in the periodic table, which has attracted significant attention in the past decades. Starting from quantum degenerate dysprosium and erbium atoms, exotic phases like quantum droplets, supersolid, dipolar quantum solid in the Hubbard regime have been studied. However, the 2D dipolar superfluid still remains understudied, despite being theoretically discussed for over two decades. Although tremendous theoretical proposals predict different phenomena in 2D dipolar superfluids, our first interest is to know how the superfluidity emerges in the 2D dipolar gases at finite temperatures. Our observations suggest that the superfluid transition can be well described by the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition with an effective contact interaction as a function of dipolar orientation. With the 2D dipolar superfluid with strong DDI, we characterized the elementary excitation of the matter: the collective breathing mode. Our measurements establish how the competition between local and nonlocal interaction in strongly dipolar 2D superfluid retains quasi-scale invariance or strongly breaks scale invariance. By further searching the interaction parameters, we created stripes with global coherence, which are the first supersolid stripes in 2D. Experiments including measuring density fluctuation, coherence, and collective mode have been performed to understand the 2D supersolid. At last, we also observe unconventional light scattering from round-disk dipolar BECs, which provides new possibilities for atom optics.
The dynamics of nonequilibrium closed quantum systems and their route to thermalization are of fundamental interest to several fields, from cosmology to particle physics. However, a comprehensive description of nonequilibrium phenomena still presents a significant challenge. In this work, we report the observation of distinct stages during the relaxation of the decaying turbulence in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates. Our findings show a direct particle cascade from low to high momenta, a consequence of the energy injection in the system, exhibiting a characteristic universal scaling. This stage is followed by an inverse particle cascade responsible for repopulating the previously depleted condensate. Both cascades can be explained through self-similar solutions provided by wave turbulence theory. These findings provide important insights into the relaxation stages of out-of-equilibrium quantum many-body systems.
We review turbulence in ultracold quantum gases, using the scalar contact-interaction Bose-Einstein condensate as the reference system for quantized circulation, compressibility, vortices, sound, and cascades. We focus on the quantitative diagnostics that connect helium and classical phenomenology to microscopic wave-function dynamics: incompressible and compressible kinetic-energy spectra, wave-occupation spectra, spectral fluxes, vortex-resolved correlations, and velocity statistics. These diagnostics distinguish equilibrium vortex organization, decaying turbulent relaxation, forced cascade dynamics, and weak-wave turbulence, and show why power laws alone are insufficient evidence for a cascade. We survey experiments on two-dimensional Onsager clustering, three-dimensional vortex-line turbulence, box-trap wave cascades, engineered dissipation, and turbulent equations of state. We close by briefly placing the contact-interaction scalar superfluid system in a broader landscape of nonlocal, multicomponent, fermionic, and driven-dissipative quantum fluids, where turbulence concepts can be tested for universality.