No Arabic abstract
We investigate the properties of quantized vortices in a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensed gas by means of a generalised Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The size of the vortex core hugely increases by increasing the weight of the dipolar interaction and approaching the transition to the supersolid phase. The critical angular velocity for the existence of an energetically stable vortex decreases in the supersolid, due to the reduced value of the density in the interdroplet region. The angular momentum per particle associated with the vortex line is shown to be smaller than $hbar$, reflecting the reduction of the global superfluidity. The real-time vortex nucleation in a rotating trap is shown to be triggered, as for a standard condensate, by the softening of the quadrupole mode. For large angular velocities, when the distance between vortices becomes comparable to the interdroplet distance, the vortices are arranged into a honeycomb structure, which coexists with the triangular geometry of the supersolid lattice and persists during the free expansion of the atomic cloud.
Vortices are expected to exist in a supersolid but experimentally their detection can be difficult because the vortex cores are localized at positions where the local density is very low. We address here this problem by performing numerical simulations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in a pancake confinement at $T=0$ K and study the effect of quantized vorticity on the phases that can be realized depending upon the ratio between dipolar and short-range interaction. By increasing this ratio the system undergoes a spontaneous density modulation in the form of an ordered arrangement of multi-atom droplets. This modulated phase can be either a supersolid (SS) or a normal solid (NS). In the SS state droplets are immersed in a background of low-density superfluid and the system has a finite global superfluid fraction resulting in non-classical rotational inertia. In the NS state no such superfluid background is present and the global superfluid fraction vanishes. We propose here a protocol to create vortices in modulated phases of dipolar BEC by freezing into such phases a vortex-hosting superfluid (SF) state. The resulting system, depending upon the interactions strengths, can be either a SS or a NS To discriminate between these two possible outcome of a freezing experiment, we show that upon releasing of the radial harmonic confinement, the expanding vortex-hosting SS shows tell-tale quantum interference effects which display the symmetry of the vortex lattice of the originating SF, as opposed to the behavior of the NS which shows instead a ballistic radial expansion of the individual droplets. Such markedly different behavior might be used to prove the supersolid character of rotating dipolar condensates.
Motivated by a recent experiment [L.Chomaz et al., Nature Physics 14, 442 (2018)], we perform numerical simulations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in a tubular confinement at T=0 within Density Functional Theory, where the beyond-mean-field correction to the ground state energy is included in the Local Density Approximation. We study the excitation spectrum of the system by solving the corresponding Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. The calculated spectrum shows a roton minimum, and the roton gap decreases by reducing the effective scattering length. As the roton gap disappears, the system spontaneously develops in its ground-state a periodic, linear structure formed by denser clusters of atomic dipoles immersed in a dilute superfluid background. This structure shows the hallmarks of a supersolid system, i.e. (i) a finite non-classical translational inertia along the tube axis and (ii) the appearance, besides the phonon mode, of the Nambu-Goldstone gapless mode corresponding to phase fluctuations, and related to the spontaneous breaking of the gauge symmetry. A further decrease in the scattering length eventually leads to the formation of a periodic linear array of self-bound droplets.
We study the properties of singly-quantized linear vortices in the supersolid phase of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate at zero temperature modeling $^{164}$Dy atoms. The system is extended in the $x-y$ plane and confined by a harmonic trap in the the polarization direction $z$. Our study is based on a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We characterize the ground state of the system in terms of spatial order and superfluid fraction and compare the properties of a single vortex and of a vortex dipole in the superfluid phase (SFP) and in the supersolid phase (SSP). At variance with a vortex in the SFP, which is free to move in the superfluid, a vortex in the SSP is localized at the interstitial sites and does not move freely. We have computed the energy barrier for motion from an equilibrium site to another. The fact that the vortex is submitted to a periodic potential has a dramatic effect on the dynamics of a vortex dipole made of two counter rotating parallel vortices; instead of rigidly translating as in the SFP, the vortex and anti-vortex approach each other by a series of jumps from one site to another until they annihilate in a very short time and their energy is transferred to bulk excitations.
Recent experimental breakthroughs in trapping, cooling and controlling ultracold gases of polar molecules, magnetic and Rydberg atoms have paved the way toward the investigation of highly tunable quantum systems, where anisotropic, long-range dipolar interactions play a prominent role at the many-body level. In this article we review recent theoretical studies concerning the physics of such systems. Starting from a general discussion on interaction design techniques and microscopic Hamiltonians, we provide a summary of recent work focused on many-body properties of dipolar systems, including: weakly interacting Bose gases, weakly interacting Fermi gases, multilayer systems, strongly interacting dipolar gases and dipolar gases in 1D and quasi-1D geometries. Within each of these topics, purely dipolar effects and connections with experimental realizations are emphasized.
By combining theory and experiments, we demonstrate that dipolar quantum gases of both $^{166}$Er and $^{164}$Dy support a state with supersolid properties, where a spontaneous density modulation and a global phase coherence coexist. This paradoxical state occurs in a well defined parameter range, separating the phases of a regular Bose-Einstein condensate and of an insulating droplet array, and is rooted in the roton mode softening, on the one side, and in the stabilization driven by quantum fluctuations, on the other side. Here, we identify the parameter regime for each of the three phases. In the experiment, we rely on a detailed analysis of the interference patterns resulting from the free expansion of the gas, quantifying both its density modulation and its global phase coherence. Reaching the phases via a slow interaction tuning, starting from a stable condensate, we observe that $^{166}$Er and $^{164}$Dy exhibit a striking difference in the lifetime of the supersolid properties, due to the different atom loss rates in the two systems. Indeed, while in $^{166}$Er the supersolid behavior only survives a few tens of milliseconds, we observe coherent density modulations for more than $150,$ms in $^{164}$Dy. Building on this long lifetime, we demonstrate an alternative path to reach the supersolid regime, relying solely on evaporative cooling starting from a thermal gas.