Biaxial spin-nematic phase of two dimensional disordered rotor models and spin-one bosons in optical lattices

TL;DR

This paper predicts that disordered two-dimensional rotor models with quadrupolar interactions can host stable biaxial nematic phases, which could be realized and observed in ultracold spin-one Bose atom experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field analysis showing the stability of biaxial nematic order in disordered rotor models and proposes experimental detection methods.

Findings

Biaxial nematic order can exist in disordered rotor models.

The phase is stable against small quantum fluctuations.

Experimental realization with ultracold spin-one Bose atoms is feasible.

Abstract

We show that the ground state of disordered rotor models with quadrupolar interactions can exhibit biaxial nematic ordering in the disorder-averaged sense. We present a mean-field analysis of the model and demonstrate that the biaxial phase is stable against small quantum fluctuations. We point out the possibility of experimental realization of such rotor models using ultracold spin-one Bose atoms in a spin-dependent and disordered optical lattice in the limit of a large number of atoms per site and also suggest an imaging experiment to detect the biaxial nematicity in such systems.