Creation of a dipolar superfluid in optical lattices

TL;DR

This paper proposes a method to create a dipolar superfluid by loading a two-species BEC into an optical lattice, forming heteronuclear molecules with large dipole moments, and inducing a transition to a superfluid phase.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to generate dipolar superfluids using heteronuclear molecules formed in optical lattices, combining BEC and photo-association techniques.

Findings

Formation of heteronuclear molecules with large dipole moments at each lattice site.

Transition from dipolar Mott-insulator to dipolar superfluid demonstrated.

Potential pathway to dipolar molecular BECs established.

Abstract

We show that by loading a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of two different atomic species into an optical lattice, it is possible to achieve a Mott-insulator phase with exactly one atom of each species per lattice site. A subsequent photo-association leads to the formation of one heteronuclear molecule with a large electric dipole moment, at each lattice site. The melting of such dipolar Mott-insulator creates a dipolar superfluid, and eventually a dipolar molecular BEC.