We investigate non-equilibrium pattern formation in an antiparallel two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate by varying the polarization angle and the trap aspect ratio. At finite tilt, the condensate supports stripe order. Quenching the angle to zero triggers a roton-assisted, mushroom-like corrugation that destroys translational order and drives the system into labyrinthine textures, whereas a slow linear ramp produces long-lived curved stripes that ultimately converge to labyrinths. Population imbalance strongly biases the evolution: the minority component preferentially fragments into a stable droplet array while the majority remains comparatively diffuse; once formed, the droplet crystal is robust under polarization hysteresis with largely reversible shape changes and unchanged lattice topology. The trap aspect ratio controls both the initial stripe number and the instability timescale, with tighter axial confinement accelerating corrugation and yielding denser labyrinths at late times. All behaviors arise within a quasi-two-dimensional mean-field regime where beyond-mean-field corrections are negligible; accordingly, the droplets reported here are not self-bound in free space. The observed textures (such as stripes, curved stripes, and labyrinths) mirror the taxonomy and instability pathways of nuclear "pasta" morphologies (rods and slabs) known from neutron-star and supernova matter, highlighting polarization angle, trap geometry, and population imbalance as practical, experimentally accessible controls for selecting and steering patterns in dipolar mixtures.
We investigate non-equilibrium pattern formation in an antiparallel two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate by varying the polarization angle and the trap aspect ratio. At finite tilt, the condensate supports stripe order. Quenching the angle to zero triggers a roton-assisted, mushroom-like corrugation that destroys translational order and drives the system into labyrinthine textures, whereas a slow linear ramp produces long-lived curved stripes that ultimately converge to labyrinths. Population imbalance strongly biases the evolution: the minority component preferentially fragments into a stable droplet array while the majority remains comparatively diffuse; once formed, the droplet crystal is robust under polarization hysteresis with largely reversible shape changes and unchanged lattice topology. The trap aspect ratio controls both the initial stripe number and the instability timescale, with tighter axial confinement accelerating corrugation and yielding denser labyrinths at late times. All behaviors arise within a quasi-two-dimensional mean-field regime where beyond-mean-field corrections are negligible; accordingly, the droplets reported here are not self-bound in free space. The observed textures (such as stripes, curved stripes, and labyrinths) mirror the taxonomy and instability pathways of nuclear "pasta" morphologies (rods and slabs) known from neutron-star and supernova matter, highlighting polarization angle, trap geometry, and population imbalance as practical, experimentally accessible controls for selecting and steering patterns in dipolar mixtures.
We study the ground-state density patterns of a population-imbalanced two-component dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a circular quasi-two-dimensional box. Using a mean-field model, we map out phase diagrams as functions of the axial confinement, interaction imbalance, and population ratio. The system supports a rich sequence of stationary morphologies, including a nearly uniform pancake state, pancake-droplet and ring-droplet coexistence states, droplet arrays, and concentric rings. These patterns show a close structural correspondence to microphase-separated morphologies in diblock-copolymer systems, with the population imbalance acting as an effective volume fraction that selects the pattern topology. Analysis of the density profiles and structure factors reveals that the modulated states possess an intrinsic nonzero characteristic wave vector, which remains essentially unchanged when the box size is varied. We also find that the characteristic pattern spacing scales linearly with the axial confinement length, indicating that the transverse thickness of the condensate controls the effective in-plane length scale. In a finite circular box, this smooth scaling is interrupted by discrete steps, reflecting geometric frustration and the integer locking of the number of rings or droplets. Our results show that box-trapped dipolar mixtures provide a controllable platform for studying finite-size pattern selection and nonlocal microphase formation in quantum fluids.
The effect of dipolar orientation with respect to the condensate plane on the mean-field dynamics of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates in a pancake-shaped confinement is discussed. The stability of a quasi-two-dimensional condensate, with respect to the tilting angle, is found to be different from a two-dimensional layer of dipoles, indicating the relevance of the transverse extension while characterizing two-dimensional dipolar systems. An anisotropic excitation spectrum exhibiting a highly tunable, rotonlike minimum can arise entirely from the dipole-dipole interactions, by tilting the dipoles. At the magic angle and in the absence of contact interactions, the long-wavelength excitations are not phononlike and always unstable. The post-roton-instability dynamics, in contrast to phonon instability, in a uniform condensate, is featured by a transient, defect-free, stripe pattern, which eventually undergoes local collapses, and driving the condensate back into the stable regime can make them sustained for longer. Hopping between stripes has been observed before it melts into a uniform state in the presence of dissipation. Finally, we discuss a class of solutions, in which a quasi-two-dimensional condensate is self-trapped in one direction, as well as a regime of interaction parameters, including attractive short-range interactions, at which a two-dimensional anisotropic soliton can be stabilized, and we show that a chromium condensate with a relatively small number of atoms is well suited for this.
The effect of dipolar orientation with respect to the soliton plane on the physics of two-dimensional bright solitons in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates is discussed. Previous studies on such a soliton involved dipoles either perpendicular or parallel to the condensate plane. The tilting angle constitutes an additional tuning parameter, which helps us to control the in-plane anisotropy of the soliton as well as provides access to previously disregarded regimes of interaction parameters for soliton stability. In addition, it can be used to drive the condensate into phonon instability without changing its interaction parameters or trap geometry. The phonon instability in a homogeneous two-dimensional condensate of tilted dipoles always features a transient stripe pattern, which eventually breaks into a metastable soliton gas. Finally, we demonstrate how a dipolar BEC in a shallow trap can eventually be turned into a self-trapped matter wave by an adiabatic approach involving the tuning of the tilting angle.
Abstract Vortex-lattice patterns with transitions from regular to other variety vortex shapes are predicted in rotating binary mixtures of dipolar Bose–Einstein condensates loaded in squared optical lattices (OLs). We focus our investigation on the experimentally accessible dipolar isotopes of dysprosium ( 162,164 Dy), erbium ( 168 Er), chromium ( 52 Cr), and rubidium ( 87 Rb), by considering the binary mixtures ( 164 Dy- 162 Dy, 168 Er- 164 Dy, 164 Dy- 52 Cr and 164 Dy- 87 Rb), which are confined in strong pancake-shaped traps and loaded in squared two-dimensional (2D) OLs, where we vary the polarization angle of the dipoles, the inter-species contact interactions and the rotation frequency. The ratio between inter- to intra-species contact interaction is used for altering the miscibility properties, with the polarization of the dipolar species used for tuning the dipole–dipole interactions to repulsive or attractive. For enough higher rotation, where the inter- to intra-species scattering length ratio is larger than one, in which a richer variety of vortex-lattice patterns are predicted, including vortex sheets and 2D rotating droplet formations. The patterns can be controlled by changing the OL parameters, as shown for the symmetric 164 Dy- 162 Dy dipolar mixture. For mixtures with stronger differences in the dipole moments, such as 164 Dy- 52 Cr and 164 Dy- 87 Rb, only half the quantum vortices and circular ones have been observed, which will depend on the dipole orientations.
Recent experiments have created supersolids of dipolar quantum droplets. The resulting crystals lack, however, a genuine cohesive energy and are maintained by the presence of an external confinement, bearing a resemblance to the case of ion Coulomb crystals. We show that a mixture of two antiparallel dipolar condensates allows for the creation of potentially large, self-bound crystals, which, resembling ionic crystals in solid-state physics, are maintained by the mutual dipolar attraction between the components, with no need of transversal confinement. This opens intriguing possibilities, including three-dimensionally self-bound droplet-ring structures, stripe/labyrinthic patterns, and self-bound crystals of droplets surrounded by an interstitial superfluid, resembling the case of superfluid Helium in porous media.
Recent experiments have created supersolids of dipolar quantum droplets. The resulting crystals lack, however, a genuine cohesive energy and are maintained by the presence of an external confinement, bearing a resemblance to the case of ion Coulomb crystals. We show that a mixture of two antiparallel dipolar condensates allows for the creation of potentially large, self-bound crystals, which, resembling ionic crystals in solid-state physics, are maintained by the mutual dipolar attraction between the components, with no need of transversal confinement. This opens intriguing possibilities, including three-dimensionally self-bound droplet-ring structures, stripe/labyrinthic patterns, and self-bound crystals of droplets surrounded by an interstitial superfluid, resembling the case of superfluid Helium in porous media.