Supersolidity in an elongated dipolar condensate

Abstract

We present a theory for the emergence of a supersolid state in a cigar-shaped dipolar quantum Bose gas. Our approach is based on a reduced three-dimensional (3D) theory, where the condensate wave function is decomposed into an axial field and a transverse part described variationally. This provides an accurate fully 3D description that is specific to the regime of current experiments and efficient to compute. We apply this theory to understand the phase diagram for a gas in an infinite tube potential. We find that the supersolid transition has continuous and discontinuous regions as the averaged density varies. We develop two simplified analytic models to characterize the phase diagram and elucidate the roles of quantum droplets and of the roton excitation.