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Il Colle di Galileo

The crystallization of a superfluid: the supersolid

Nicolò Antolini, Giulio Biagioni

Published Aug 2, 2022• 0 citations
Publisher

Abstract

Superfluids can become crystals, obtaining rigidity and plasticity in analogy with classical solids, but keeping their typical properties of quantum coherence. The resulting phase is a supersolid, recently observed experimentally in a dipolar quantum gas. We have studied the phase transition from the superfluid to the supersolid, highlighting the analogies and differences with the corresponding classical transition from liquid to solid.

DOI
10.36253/cdg-13840

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Superfluids can become crystals, obtaining rigidity and plasticity in analogy with classical solids, but keeping their typical properties of quantum coherence. The resulting phase is a supersolid, recently observed experimentally in a dipolar quantum gas. We have studied the phase transition from the superfluid to the supersolid, highlighting the analogies and differences with the corresponding classical transition from liquid to solid.
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.
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
The elusive supersolid, an exotic quantum phase that combines the properties of a crystalline solid and those of a superfluid, has been recently discovered in a system of Bose-condensed strongly magnetic atoms. In this paper, I report on an experiment that directly demonstrates the superfluid behavior of the dipolar supersolid measuring its anomalous response to a rotational excitation. I complement the illustration of the experimental results with a review and an original interpretation of a seminal model due to Leggett.
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.
Recent breakthrough experiments on dipolar condensates have reported the creation of supersolids, including two-dimensional arrays of quantum droplets. Droplet arrays are, however, not the only possible nontrivial density arrangement resulting from the interplay of mean-field instability and quantum stabilization. Several other possible density patterns may occur in trapped condensates at higher densities, including the so-called honeycomb supersolid, a phase that exists, as it is also the case of a triangular droplet supersolid, in the thermodynamic limit. We show that compared to droplet supersolids, honeycomb supersolids have a much-enhanced superfluid fraction while keeping a large density contrast, and constitute in this sense a much better dipolar supersolid. However, in contrast to droplet supersolids, quantized vortices cannot be created in a honeycomb supersolid without driving a transition into a so-called labyrinthic phase. We show that the reduced moment of inertia, and with it the superfluid fraction, can be however reliably probed by studying the dynamics following a scissorslike perturbation.