Search

The existence of a paradoxical supersolid phase of matter, possessing the apparently incompatible properties of crystalline order and superfluidity, was predicted 50 years ago. Solid helium was the natural candidate, but there supersolidity has not been observed yet, despite numerous attempts. Ultracold quantum gases have recently shown the appearance of the periodic order typical of a crystal, due to various types of controllable interactions. A crucial feature of a D-dimensional supersolid is the occurrence of up to D+1 gapless excitations reflecting the Goldstone modes associated with the spontaneous breaking of two continuous symmetries: the breaking of phase invariance, corresponding to the locking of the phase of the atomic wave functions at the origin of superfluid phenomena, and the breaking of translational invariance due to the lattice structure of the system. The occurrence of such modes has been the object of intense theoretical investigations, but their experimental observation is still missing. Here we demonstrate the supersolid symmetry breaking through the appearance of two distinct compressional oscillation modes in a harmonically trapped dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate, reflecting the gapless Goldstone excitations of the homogeneous system. We observe that the two modes have different natures, with the higher frequency mode associated with an oscillation of the periodicity of the emergent lattice and the lower one characterizing the superfluid oscillations. Our work paves the way to explore the two quantum phase transitions between the superfluid, supersolid and solid-like configurations that can be accessed by tuning a single interaction parameter.

It is shown how to perfectly transfer an arbitrary qudit state in interacting boson networks. By defining a family of Hamiltonians related to Bose-Hubbard model, we describe a possible method for state transfer through bosonic atoms trapped in these networks with different kinds of coupling strengths between them. Particularly, by taking the underlying networks of so called group schemes as interacting boson networks, we show how choose suitable coupling strengths between the nodes, in order that an arbitrary qudit state be transferred from one node to its antipode, perfectly. In fact, by employing the group theory properties of these networks, an explicit formula for suitable coupling strengths has been given in order that perfect state transfer (PST) be achieved. Finally, as examples, PST on the underlying networks associated with cyclic group C2m, dihedral group D2n, Clifford group CL(n), and the groups U6n and V8n has been considered in details. Keywords: Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, Interacting boson networks, Perfect state transfer (PST), Qudit state, Underlying networks, Group schemes PACs Index: 01.55.+b, 02.10.Yn, Comment: 20 pages