Exploring molecular supersolidity via exact and mean-field theories: single microwave shielding

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Cardinale, Tiziano Arnone, Bland, Thomas, Reimann, Stephanie M.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Cardinale, Tiziano Arnone
Bland, Thomas
Reimann, Stephanie M.
author_facet Cardinale, Tiziano Arnone
Bland, Thomas
Reimann, Stephanie M.
contents Ultracold polar molecules with microwave shielding provide a powerful platform for exploring quantum many-body physics with strong, anisotropic interactions. We develop an extended Gross-Pitaevskii framework for bosonic molecules under single microwave shielding, incorporating effective interactions and quantum fluctuations, and benchmark it against exact Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In the regime of positive scattering lengths, our approach captures superfluid, supersolid, and droplet phases with excellent accuracy. We show that elliptic microwave polarization induces direction-dependent superfluidity--absent in cylindrically symmetric systems. A quasi-1D theory reveals that roton softening and instabilities can be controlled via ellipticity, consistent with recent experiments. Furthermore, we find that the nature of the superfluid-to-supersolid transition is strongly influenced by the ellipticity: the transition is sharp at low ellipticity and continuous at higher values. This tunability offers a potential route for low entropy preparation of molecular supersolids via adiabatic ramps. While double shielding is often used experimentally, our results demonstrate that single-shielded molecules already offer rich, controllable behavior, laying the groundwork for future studies with more complex shielding schemes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_18051
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Exploring molecular supersolidity via exact and mean-field theories: single microwave shielding
Cardinale, Tiziano Arnone
Bland, Thomas
Reimann, Stephanie M.
Quantum Gases
Quantum Physics
Ultracold polar molecules with microwave shielding provide a powerful platform for exploring quantum many-body physics with strong, anisotropic interactions. We develop an extended Gross-Pitaevskii framework for bosonic molecules under single microwave shielding, incorporating effective interactions and quantum fluctuations, and benchmark it against exact Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. In the regime of positive scattering lengths, our approach captures superfluid, supersolid, and droplet phases with excellent accuracy. We show that elliptic microwave polarization induces direction-dependent superfluidity--absent in cylindrically symmetric systems. A quasi-1D theory reveals that roton softening and instabilities can be controlled via ellipticity, consistent with recent experiments. Furthermore, we find that the nature of the superfluid-to-supersolid transition is strongly influenced by the ellipticity: the transition is sharp at low ellipticity and continuous at higher values. This tunability offers a potential route for low entropy preparation of molecular supersolids via adiabatic ramps. While double shielding is often used experimentally, our results demonstrate that single-shielded molecules already offer rich, controllable behavior, laying the groundwork for future studies with more complex shielding schemes.
title Exploring molecular supersolidity via exact and mean-field theories: single microwave shielding
topic Quantum Gases
Quantum Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.18051