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  • Perspective
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Supersolidity in ultracold dipolar gases

Nature Reviews Physics volume 5, pages 735–743 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

Can a gas behave like a crystal? Supersolidity is an intriguing and challenging state of matter that combines key features of superfluids and crystals. Predicted a long time ago, its experimental realization has been recently achieved in Bose–Einstein condensed atomic gases inside optical resonators, spin–orbit-coupled Bose–Einstein condensates and atomic gases interacting with long-range dipolar forces. The activity on dipolar gases has been particularly vibrant in the past few years. This Perspective article summarizes the main experimental and theoretical achievements concerning supersolidity in the field of dipolar gases, like the observation of the density modulations caused by the spontaneous breaking of translational invariance, the effects of coherence and the occurrence of novel Goldstone modes. A series of important issues for the future experimental and theoretical research are outlined including, among others, the possible realization of quantized vortices inside these novel crystal structures, the role of dimensionality, the characterization of the crystal properties and the nature of the phase transitions. At the end, a brief overview on some other (mainly cold atomic) platforms, in which supersolidity has been observed or supersolidity is expected to emerge, is provided.

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Fig. 1: Observation of the crystallization of droplets in a superfluid dipolar gas.
Fig. 2: Probing the existence of the roton mode and its softening using Bragg spectroscopy, that is, by resonantly exciting the gas cloud via a two-photon process.
Fig. 3: Breathing modes in the superfluid, supersolid and crystal phases.
Fig. 4: Density plots of vortex configurations.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge fruitful and stimulating discussions and collaborations during the past few years with F. Ferlaino, A. Gallemí, K. Geier, P. Hauke, W. Ketterle, G. Martone, G. Modugno, T. Pfau, F. Piazza, S. Roccuzzo, L. Santos and L. Tarruell. We acknowledge funding from Provincia Autonoma di Trento, from the Italian Ministry of Education, Universities and Research under the PRIN2017 project CEnTraL (Protocol Number 20172H2SC4) and from Piano Nazionale di Ripresa e Resilienza Ministry of Universities and Research project PE0000023-NQSTI.

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    Alessio Recati & Sandro Stringari

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Recati, A., Stringari, S. Supersolidity in ultracold dipolar gases. Nat Rev Phys 5, 735–743 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42254-023-00648-2

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