Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

  • Letter
  • Published:

Coupling two order parameters in a quantum gas

Nature Materials volume 17, pages 686–690 (2018)Cite this article

Subjects

Abstract

Controlling matter to simultaneously support coupled properties is of fundamental and technological importance1 (for example, in multiferroics2,3,4,5 or high-temperature superconductors6,7,8,9). However, determining the microscopic mechanisms responsible for the simultaneous presence of different orders is difficult, making it hard to predict material phenomenology10,11 or modify properties12,13,14,15,16. Here, using a quantum gas to engineer an adjustable interaction at the microscopic level, we demonstrate scenarios of competition, coexistence and mutual enhancement of two orders. For the enhancement scenario, the presence of one order lowers the critical point of the other. Our system is realized by a Bose–Einstein condensate that can undergo self-organization phase transitions in two optical resonators17, resulting in two distinct crystalline density orders. We characterize the coupling between these orders by measuring the composite order parameter and the elementary excitations and explain our results with a mean-field free-energy model derived from a microscopic Hamiltonian. Our system is ideally suited to explore quantum tricritical points18 and can be extended to study the interplay of spin and density orders19 as a function of temperature20.

This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution

Access options

Buy this article

  • Purchase on Springer Link
  • Instant access to full article PDF
Buy now

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

Fig. 1: Phase diagram of two coupled order parameters.
Fig. 2: Observing a mixed-order phase.
Fig. 3: Controlling the coupling of two orders.
Fig. 4: Characterization of coupled orders.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Spaldin, N. A., Cheong, S.-W. & Ramesh, R. Multiferroics: Past, present, and future. Phys. Today 10, 38–43 (October, 2010).

  2. Cheong, A.-W. & Mostovoy, M. Multiferroics: a magnetic twist for ferroelectricity. Nat. Mater. 6, 13–20 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Hur, N. et al. Electric polarization reversal and memory in a multiferroic material induced by magnetic fields. Nature 429, 392–395 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Lawes, G. et al. Magnetically driven ferroelectric order in Ni3V2O8. Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 087205 (2005).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Heyer, O. et al. A new multiferroic material: MnWO4. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 18, L471–L475 (2006).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Tranquada, J. M., Sternlieb, B. J., Axe, J. D., Nakamura, Y. & Uchida, S. Evidence for stripe correlations of spins and holes in copper oxide superconductors. Nature 375, 561–563 (1995).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Carbotte, J. P., Schachinger, E. & Basov, D. N. Coupling strength of charge carriers to spin fluctuations in high-temperature superconductors. Nature 401, 354–356 (1999).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Daou, R. et al. Broken rotational symmetry in the pseudogap phase of a high-T c superconductor. Nature 463, 519–522 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Hinkov, V. et al. Electronic liquid crystal state in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O6.45. Science 319, 597–600 (2008).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Demler, E., Hanke, W. & Zhang, S.-C. SO(5) theory of antiferromagnetism and superconductivity. Rev. Mod. Phys. 76, 909–974 (2004).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Artyukhin, S., Delaney, K. T., Spaldin, N. A. & Mostovoy, M. Landau theory of topological defects in multiferroic hexagonal manganites. Nat. Mater. 13, 42–49 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Norman, M. R., Randeria, M., Ding, H. & Campuzano, J. C. Phenomenology of the low-energy spectral function in high-T c superconductors. Phys. Rev. B 57, R11093(R) (1998).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. Hill, N. A. Why are there so few magnetic ferroelectrics? J. Phys. Chem. B 104, 6694–6709 (2000).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  14. Aschauer, U. & Spaldin, N. A. Competition and cooperation between antiferrodistortive and ferroelectric instabilities in the model perovskite SrTiO3. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 26, 122203 (2014).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Tsvelik, A. M. & Chubukov, A. V. Phenomenological theory of the underdoped phase of a high-T c superconductor. Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 237001 (2007).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Nyéki, J. et al. Intertwined superfluid and density wave order in two-dimensional 4He. Nat. Phys. 13, 455–459 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  17. Léonard, J., Morales, A., Zupancic, P., Esslinger, T. & Donner, T. Supersolid formation in a quantum gas breaking a continuous translational symmetry. Nature 543, 87–90 (2016).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Friedemann, S. et al. Quantum tricritical points in NbFe2. Nat. Phys. 14, 62–67 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. Mivehvar, F., Piazza, F. & Ritsch, H. Disorder-driven density and spin self-ordering of a Bose–Einstein condensate in a cavity. Phys. Rev. Lett. 119, 063602 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Piazza, F., Strack, P. & Zwerger, W. Bose–Einstein condensation versus Dicke–Hepp–Lieb transition in an optical cavity. Ann. Phys. (NY) 339, 135–159 (2013).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Sachdev, S. Quantum Phase Transitions (Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  22. Fradkin, E., Kivelson, S. A. & Tranquada, J. M. Colloquium: Theory of intertwined orders in high temperature superconductors. Rev. Mod. Phys. 87, 457–482 (2015).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. Baumann, K., Guerlin, C., Brennecke, F. & Esslinger, T. Dicke quantum phase transition with a superfluid gas in an optical cavity. Nature 464, 1301–1306 (2010).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. Baumann, K., Mottl, R., Brennecke, F. & Esslinger, T. Exploring symmetry breaking at the Dicke quantum phase transition. Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 140402 (2011).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  25. Ketterle, W., Durfee, D. S. & Stamper-Kurn, D. M. Making, Probing and Understanding BEC Course CXL (eds Inguscio, M. et al.) 67 (IOS, Amsterdam, 1999).

  26. Léonard, J., Morales, A., Zupancic, P., Donner, T. & Esslinger, T. Monitoring and manipulating Higgs and Goldstone modes in a supersolid quantum gas. Science 358, 1415–1418 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  27. Lang, J., Piazza, F. & Zwerger, W. Collective excitations and supersolid behavior of bosonic atoms inside two crossed optical cavities. New J. Phys. 19, 123027 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Bornholdt, S., Tetradis, N. & Wetterich, C. Coleman–Weinberg phase transition in two–scalar models. Phys. Rev. B 348, 89–99 (1995).

    Google Scholar 

  29. Gopalakrishnan, S., Shchadilova, Y. E. & Demler, E. Intertwined and vestigial order with ultracold atoms in multiple cavity modes. Phys. Rev. A 96, 063828 (2017).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. Awadhesh, N., Balatsky, A. V. & Spaldin, N. A. Multiferroic quantum criticality. Preprint at https://arxiv.org/abs/1711.07989 (2017).

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank E. Demler, S. Gopalakrishnan, A. Narayan, Y. E. Shchadilova and N. Spaldin for insightful discussions. We thank D. Dreon for careful reading of the manuscript and X. Li for experimental assistance. We acknowledge funding for the SBFI Horizon2020 project QUIC (grant agreement 641122) and the Horizon2020 European Training Network ColOpt (grant agreement 721465), and SNF support for the NCCR QSIT and the DACH project ‘Quantum Crystals of Matter and Light’.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Andrea Morales, Philip Zupancic, Julian Léonard, Tilman Esslinger & Tobias Donner

  2. Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA

    Julian Léonard

Authors
  1. Andrea Morales
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Philip Zupancic
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  3. Julian Léonard
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  4. Tilman Esslinger
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  5. Tobias Donner
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Contributions

All authors contributed extensively to the work presented here.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Tilman Esslinger.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher’s note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Figures 1–3

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Morales, A., Zupancic, P., Léonard, J. et al. Coupling two order parameters in a quantum gas. Nature Mater 17, 686–690 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0118-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-018-0118-1

This article is cited by

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing