Accessing elusive two-dimensional phases of dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates by finite temperature

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that finite temperature effects can enable access to complex two-dimensional phases in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates, reducing experimental requirements for realizing honeycomb and stripe phases.

Contribution

It introduces a method to utilize finite temperature to access elusive phases in dipolar BECs, combining variational, numerical, and real-time simulations.

Findings

Finite temperature facilitates access to honeycomb and stripe phases.

Thermal fluctuations decrease the required particle number and density.

Real-time simulations confirm the formation of these phases.

Abstract

It has been shown that dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates that are tightly trapped along the polarization direction can feature a rich phase diagram. In this paper we show that finite temperature can assist in accessing parts of the phase diagram that otherwise appear hard to realise due to excessively large densities and number of atoms being required. These include honeycomb and stripe phases both in the thermodynamic limit as well as with a finite extent using both variational and numerical calculations. We account for the effect of thermal fluctuations by means of Bogoliubov theory employing the local density approximation. Furthermore, we exhibit real-time evolution simulations leading to such states. We find that finite temperatures can lead to a significant decrease in the necessary particle number and density that might ultimately pave a route for future experimental realisations.