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Physics

A Supersolid Disk

Katherine Wright

Published May 13, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

A Supersolid DiskResearchers have created a disk-shaped supersolid, an achievement that could provide new routes to exploring previously unseen states of matter.By Katherine Wright L ast year, using ultracold dysprosium atoms, researchers created the first 2D supersolid-a weird quantum material that has the ordered structure of a solid but that can flow like a frictionless fluid.That 2D supersolid resembled a long, thin rhomboid, leaving open the question of whether 2D supersolids could be molded into other geometries.Now, Thomas Bland of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and colleagues give a positive answer to this question by theoretically and experimentally demonstrating a disk-shaped supersolid [1].The team, which includes members of the group behind the earlier demonstration, says that such a 2D supersolid could be used to study quantum vortices, a key feature of supersolids' superfluid behavior.

DOI
10.1103/physics.15.s63

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A Supersolid DiskResearchers have created a disk-shaped supersolid, an achievement that could provide new routes to exploring previously unseen states of matter.By Katherine Wright L ast year, using ultracold dysprosium atoms, researchers created the first 2D supersolid-a weird quantum material that has the ordered structure of a solid but that can flow like a frictionless fluid.That 2D supersolid resembled a long, thin rhomboid, leaving open the question of whether 2D supersolids could be molded into other geometries.Now, Thomas Bland of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and colleagues give a positive answer to this question by theoretically and experimentally demonstrating a disk-shaped supersolid [1].The team, which includes members of the group behind the earlier demonstration, says that such a 2D supersolid could be used to study quantum vortices, a key feature of supersolids' superfluid behavior.
Abstract Supersolid states simultaneously feature properties typically associated with a solid and with a superfluid. Like a solid, they possess crystalline order, manifesting as a periodic modulation of the particle density; but unlike a typical solid, they also have superfluid properties, resulting from coherent particle delocalization across the system. Such states were initially envisioned in the context of bulk solid helium, as a possible answer to the question of whether a solid could have superfluid properties1–5. Although supersolidity has not been observed in solid helium (despite much effort)6, ultracold atomic gases provide an alternative approach, recently enabling the observation and study of supersolids with dipolar atoms7–16. However, unlike the proposed phenomena in helium, these gaseous systems have so far only shown supersolidity along a single direction. Here we demonstrate the extension of supersolid properties into two dimensions by preparing a supersolid quantum gas of dysprosium atoms on both sides of a structural phase transition similar to those occurring in ionic chains17–20, quantum wires21, 22 and theoretically in chains of individual dipolar particles23, 24. This opens the possibility of studying rich excitation properties25–28, including vortex formation29–31, and ground-state phases with varied geometrical structure7, 32 in a highly flexible and controllable system.
Supersolids-the enigmatic phase of quantum matter, with properties resembling both the superfluid and solid states-have been actively sought over the past 70 years. We provide a comprehensive review of the developments to date in experimental and theoretical studies of the supersolid phases of bosons, with a particular focus on their observation in ultracold atomic gases. Additionally, the use of optical lattices facilitates the realization of 'lattice-supersolids', which paves the way to study the effect of correlations in a controlled manner. A brief theoretical framework is presented to characterize this puzzling state with competing orders and to gain insight into its basic properties. Various types of supersolid phases and the different platforms used to achieve them are described. Finally, we discuss the future prospects of research and the potential to achieve supersolids with more exotic features.
Supersolids are states of matter that spontaneously break two continuous symmetries: translational invariance due to the appearance of a crystal structure and phase invariance due to phase locking of single-particle wave functions, responsible for superfluid phenomena. While originally predicted to be present in solid helium, ultracold quantum gases provided a first platform to observe supersolids, with particular success coming from dipolar atoms. Phase locking in dipolar supersolids has been probed through e.g. measurements of the phase coherence and gapless Goldstone modes, but quantized vortices, a hydrodynamic fingerprint of superfluidity, have not yet been observed. Here, with the prerequisite pieces at our disposal, namely a method to generate vortices in dipolar gases and supersolids with two-dimensional crystalline order, we report on the theoretical investigation and experimental observation of vortices in the supersolid phase. Our work reveals a fundamental difference in vortex seeding dynamics between unmodulated and modulated quantum fluids. This opens the door to study the hydrodynamic properties of exotic quantum systems with multiple spontaneously broken symmetries, in disparate domains such as quantum crystals and neutron stars.
Fluctuations typically destroy long-range order in two-dimensional (2D) systems, posing a fundamental challenge to the existence of exotic states like supersolids, which paradoxically combine solid-like structure with frictionless superfluid flow. While long-predicted, the definitive observation of a 2D supersolid has remained an outstanding experimental goal. Here, we report the observation of a supersolid stripe phase in a strongly dipolar quantum gas of erbium atoms confined to 2D. We directly image the periodic density modulation, confirming its global phase coherence through matter-wave interference and demonstrating its phase rigidity relevant to the low-energy Goldstone mode, consistent with numerical calculations. Through collective excitation measurements, we demonstrate the hydrodynamic behavior of the supersolid. This work highlights a novel mechanism for supersolid formation in low dimensions, and opens the door for future research on the intricate interplay between temperature, supersolidity, and dimensionality.
Cooling a Thermal Cloud to a SupersolidWhen a cloud of cold atoms goes through a supersolid phase transition, its coexisting superfluid and crystalline phases do not emerge simultaneously.By Chinmayee Mishra O bserving a supersolid-a state of matter that has both superfluid and solid properties-has been a challenge for decades.The constituent particles of a supersolid form a rigid, ordered structure but can also flow without dissipating energy.This paradoxical behavior was observed in cold-atom experiments only in the last five years [1-5].Researchers typically make cold-atom supersolids starting from superfluid phases, leaving open the question of how supersolidity appears from other phases.Now, a team led by Francesca Ferlaino at the University of Innsbruck, Austria, has shown that when starting from a thermal gas, a supersolid's crystalline and superfluid orders arrive and decay sequentually