Related papers: What makes a crystal supersolid ?
Supersolids--the enigmatic phase of quantum matter, with properties resembling both the superfluid and solid states--have been actively sought over the past 70 years. We provide a comprehensive review of the developments to date in…
We briefly discuss theoretical and experimental discoveries in the field of supertransport and plasticity in imperfect solid \he4 and argue that these promise new exciting developments. Several experiments aimed at clarifying the origin of…
We analyze the analog of the Rayleigh instability in the field of gravity for the superfluid-crystal 4He interface provided that the heavier 4He crystal phase occupies the half-space over the lighter superfluid phase. The conditions and the…
We investigate the newly discovered supersolid phase by solving in random-phase approximation the anisotropic Heisenberg model of the hard-core boson ${}^4$He lattice at zero temperature. We include nearest and next-nearest neighbor…
We investigate theoretically the existence at low temperature of a commensurate (4/7) crystalline phase of a layer of either He isotope on top of a He-4 layer adsorbed on graphite. We make use of a recently developed, systematically…
When submitted to large stresses at high temperature, usual crystals may irreversibly deform. This phenomenon is known as plasticity and it is due to the motion of crystal defects such as dislocations. We have discovered that, in the…
Superfluid 4He, the first superfluid ever discovered, is in some ways the least well understood. Unlike 3He superfluid, or the variety of Bose-Einstein condensates of ultracold gases, superfluid 4He is a very dense liquid of strongly…
Time crystals are a phase of matter, for which the discrete time symmetry of the driving Hamiltonian is spontaneously broken. The breaking of discrete time symmetry has been observed in several experiments in driven spin systems. Here, we…
It is established theoretically that an ordered state with continuous symmetry is inherently unstable to arbitrarily small amounts of disorder [1, 2]. This principle is of central importance in a wide variety of condensed systems including…
Quantum crystals abound in the whole range of solid-state species. Below a certain threshold temperature the physical behavior of rare gases (4He and Ne), molecular solids (H2 and CH4), and some ionic (LiH), covalent (graphite), and…
By large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations we show that grain boundaries in Helium-4 crystals are generically superfluid at low temperature, with a transition temperature of the order of ~0.5K at the melting pressure; insulating grain…
The possible existence of an exotic phase of matter rigid like a solid but able to sustain persistent and dissipation-less flow like a superfluid, a "supersolid", has been the subject of intense theoretical and experimental efforts since…
A superfluid having atomic scale superflow of a hexagonal lattice of vortex and antivortex filaments, described by a single macroscopic wave function is presented as a supersolid. As superfluid \he4 is pressurized, at a first order…
We prove that the necessary condition for a solid to be also a superfluid is to have zero-point vacancies, or interstitial atoms, or both, as an integral part of the ground state. As a consequence, superfluidity is not possible in…
A supersolid is a system that presents long-range order and shear rigidity as a solid but which also supports a non-dissipative superflow as a superfluid. From an effective perspective, supersolids are identified with phases of matter that…
The thermodynamics of solid (hcp) He-4 is studied theoretically by means of unbiased Monte Carlo simulations at finite temperature, in a wide range of density. This study complements and extends previous theoretical work, mainly by…
An existence of the charge-induced instability is well known for the 4He crystal surface in the rough state. Much less is known about charge-induced instability at the 4He crystal surface in the smooth well-faceted state below the…
We investigate the constraints on the superfluid fraction of an amorphous solid following from an upper bound derived by Leggett. In order to accomplish this, we use as input density profiles generated for amorphous solids in a variety of…
We elucidate the microscopic quantum mechanism of superfluid $^4$He by uncovering a novel characteristic of its many-body energy levels. At temperature below the transition point, the system's low-lying levels exhibit a fundamental grouping…
Superconductivity owes its properties to the phase of the electron pair condensate that breaks the $U(1)$ symmetry. In the most traditional ground state, the phase is uniform and rigid. The normal state can be unstable towards special…