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Quantum gases show flashes of a supersolid

Supersolids are highly sought-after structures whose atoms can simultaneously support frictionless flow and form a crystal. Hallmarks of a supersolid have now been observed in three experiments that involve quantum gases of dipolar atoms.
  1. Lode Pollet

    1. Lode Pollet is in the Faculty of Physics, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, 80333 Munich, Germany.

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Sixty years ago, the theoretical physicist Eugene Gross suggested that a substance could have properties of both a solid and a liquid at the same time, provided that the liquid is a superfluid1. A superfluid is a state of matter that can flow without friction and is known to exist2,3 in helium-4 at temperatures below 2 kelvin. Gross’s putative substance was called a supersolid. But despite this theoretical simplicity, supersolids in the purest sense of the term have evaded experimental detection4. Now, Tanzi et al.5, writing in Physical Review Letters, and Böttcher et al.6 and Chomaz et al.7, writing in Physical Review X, report transient signatures of supersolidity in quantum gases of atoms that have strong magnetic dipole moments.

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Nature 569, 494-495 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-01585-w

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