Pseudo-Goldstone excitations in a striped Bose-Einstein condensate

Significant experimental progress has been made recently for observing long-sought supersolidlike states in Bose-Einstein condensates, where spatial translational symmetry is spontaneously broken by anisotropic interactions to form a stripe order. Meanwhile, the superfluid stripe ground state was also observed by applying a weak optical lattice that forces the symmetry breaking. Despite the similarity of the ground states, here we show that these two symmetry breaking mechanisms can be distinguished by their collective excitation spectra. In contrast to gapless Goldstone modes of the spontaneous stripe state, we propose that the excitation spectra of the forced stripe phase can provide direct experimental evidence for the gapped pseudo-Goldstone modes. We characterize the pseudo-Goldstone mode of such lattice-induced stripe phase through its excitation spectrum and static structure factor. Our work may pave the way for exploring spontaneous and forced or approximate symmetry breaking mechanisms in different physical systems.

Automated summary

Recent experimental progress has been made in observing long-sought supersolidlike states and superfluid stripe ground states in Bose-Einstein condensates. The study shows that these two symmetry breaking mechanisms can be distinguished by their collective excitation spectra, with experimental evidence for gapped pseudo-Goldstone modes in the forced stripe phase. This work may pave the way for exploring spontaneous and forced or approximate symmetry breaking mechanisms in different physical systems.