Supersolid phases of dipolar bosons in optical lattices with a staggered flux

TL;DR

This paper theoretically maps out the phase diagram of dipolar bosons in optical lattices with staggered flux, revealing various supersolid phases, including novel vortex-staggered states, at zero temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive mean-field phase diagram for dipolar BECs in staggered flux lattices, identifying new complex supersolid and vortex phases.

Findings

Multiple supersolid phases identified, including checkerboard and striped patterns.

Discovery of supersolid phases with staggered vortices.

Complex phase patterns emerge with varied site densities and phases.

Abstract

We present the theoretical mean-field zero-temperature phase diagram of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) with dipolar interactions loaded into an optical lattice with a staggered flux. Apart from uniform superfluid, checkerboard supersolid and striped supersolid phases, we identify several supersolid phases with staggered vortices, which can be seen as combinations of supersolid phases found in earlier work on dipolar BECs and a staggered-vortex phase found for bosons in optical lattices with staggered flux. By allowing for different phases and densities on each of the four sites of the elementary plaquette, more complex phase patterns are found.