Superstripes and quasicrystals in bosonic systems with hard-soft corona interactions

Abstract

The search for spontaneous pattern formation in equilibrium phases with genuine quantum properties is a leading direction of current research. In this work we investigate the effect of quantum fluctuations -zero point motion and exchange interactions -on the phases of an ensemble of bosonic particles with isotropic hard-soft corona interactions. We perform extensive path-integral Monte Carlo simulations to determine their ground state properties. A rich phase diagram, parametrized by the density of particles and the interaction strength of the soft-corona potential, reveals supersolid stripes, kagome and triangular crystals in the low-density regime. In the high-density limit we observe patterns with 12-fold rotational symmetry compatible with periodic approximants of quasicrystalline phases. We characterize these quantum phases by computing the superfluid density and the bond-orientational order parameter. Finally, we highlight the qualitative and quantitative differences of our findings with the classical equilibrium phases for the same parameter regimes.

Long-range interacting quantum systems

“…Another important case is the generalization to the case of multi-scale potential which has been recently studied in the quantum regimes in (Abreu et al, 2020;Cinti and Macrì, 2019;Pupillo et al, 2020) which can for specific values of the parameters of the pairwise potential can support quasicrystalline phases or stripe phases. The corresponding criteria to realize structural phase in these more complex potentials have been investigated (Mendoza-Coto et al, 2017Mendoza-Coto and Stariolo, 2012;Mendoza-Coto et al, 2015a,b).…”

Finite-temperature phases of trapped bosons in a two-dimensional quasiperiodic potential

“…In conclusion, our work offers a strong motivation for further investigation of interacting quasicrystalline phases in current ultracold atom platforms, as well as a benchmark for future studies into the thermodynamics and dynamics of systems in quasiperiodic potentials at finite temperature. Further exploration of quasicrystalline properties induced by an external potential will proceed in parallel with the study of excitation spectra [41] and exotic self-assembled quantum many-body phases with nonlocal interaction potentials [42][43][44][45][46].…”

Finite-temperature phases of trapped bosons in a two-dimensional quasiperiodic potential

“…In conclusion, our work offers a strong motivation for further investigation of interacting quasicrystalline phases in current ultracold atom platforms, as well as a benchmark for future studies into the thermodynamics and dynamics of systems in quasiperiodic potentials at finite temperature. Further exploration of quasicrystalline properties induced by an external potential will proceed in parallel with the study of excitation spectra [39] and exotic self-assembled quantum many-body phases with non-local interaction potentials [40][41][42][43][44].…”