Freiburg 2024 – scientific programme

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A: Fachverband Atomphysik

A 26: Poster V

A 26.13: Poster

Wednesday, March 13, 2024, 17:00–19:00, Tent C

Exploration of Supersolidity in Spin-Orbit Coupled Bose-Einstein Condensates — •Sarah Hirthe, Vasiliy Makhalov, Rémy Vatré, Craig Chisholm, Ramón Ramos, and Leticia Tarruell — ICFO - The Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Spain

A Supersolid is an exotic phase of matter that combines seemingly opposing characteristics of solids and superfluids. It displays spontaneous translational symmetry breaking manifesting in crystalline order, while also possessing superfluid properties like frictionless flow. Although originally predicted over fifty years ago in the context of solid Helium, supersolidity was first observed only few years ago using ultracold atoms. In these systems, various approaches like cavity-mediated interactions, dipolar interactions, or optically induced spin-orbit coupling can cause the spontaneous breaking of translational symmetry. Here, we characterize supersolidity in a spin-orbit coupled Bose-Einstein condensate of potassium. This dressed system displays an engineered single-particle dispersion relation with two minima at distinct momenta. Matter-wave interference between the condensates in the two minima gives rise to a density modulation, thus realizing the so-called supersolid stripe phase. We are able to observe this spontaneous stripe pattern in-situ, by employing a matter-wave lensing technique to magnify the density. Furthermore, we characterize the collective modes of our system. In particular, we observe a softening of the spin dipole mode for increasing coupling strength.

Keywords: Supersolid; Bosonic Mixture; Spin-Orbit Coupling