Now in Physical Review Research!
Lauriane and Francesca, together with Blair Blakie and Danny Bailly (Otago University), theoretically studied the supersolid phase diagram of dipolar quantum Bose gases in cylindrical geometries. The work is now published in Physical Review Research.
Observation of supersolidity in dipolar gases has been a breakthrough of 2019 that has triggered many further studies aiming at a deeper understanding of the properties and behaviors of the intriguing supersolid phase. The present work presents, thanks to a novel theoretical approach, a thorough mapping of the superfluid to supersolid transition. Depending on the gas density, three regimes are observed, the transition being strongly discontinuous without supersolid behavior at low densities, continuous in an intermediate density regime, and weakly discontinuous at higher densities. In the intermediate regime, the continuity arises as the supersolid ground state smoothly connects to the soft roton excitation of the uniform superfluid. Discontinuities arise due to rearrangement of the state in transverse directions. This work also shows that the recent experimental realizations achieved densities in the intermediate range, allowing for a smooth crossing to supersolid states.