Driven-Dissipative Supersolid in a Ring Cavity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the emergence of a supersolid phase in a driven-dissipative Bose-Einstein condensate within a ring cavity, showcasing spontaneous symmetry breaking, superfluidity, and a robust Goldstone mode despite photon losses.

Contribution

It introduces a novel driven-dissipative system exhibiting a supersolid phase with observable Goldstone modes, advancing understanding of nonequilibrium quantum phases.

Findings

Supersolid phase emerges above a threshold pump strength.

Goldstone mode remains undamped despite cavity losses.

Crystalline order coexists with superfluidity in the steady state.

Abstract

Supersolids are characterized by the counter-intuitive coexistence of superfluid and crystalline order. Here we study a supersolid phase emerging in the steady state of a driven-dissipative system. We consider a transversely pumped Bose-Einstein condensate trapped along the axis of a ring cavity and coherently coupled to a pair of degenerate counter-propagating cavity modes. Above a threshold pump strength the interference of photons scattered into the two cavity modes results in an emergent superradiant lattice, which spontaneously breaks the continuous translational symmetry towards a periodic atomic pattern. The crystalline steady state inherits the superfluidity of the Bose-Einstein condensate, thus exhibiting genuine properties of a supersolid. A gapless collective Goldstone mode correspondingly appears in the superradiant phase, which can be non-destructively monitored via the relative phase of the two cavity modes on the cavity output. Despite cavity-photon losses the Goldstone mode remains undamped, indicating the robustness of the supersolid phase.