Supersolid rotation in an annular Bose-Einstein condensate coupled to a ring cavity
Phys. Rev. A 114, 033327 – Published 30 September, 2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2h27-c8sp
Abstract
We theoretically investigate an annularly confined Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) coupled to a four-mirror ring cavity supporting traveling-wave optical modes. Under symmetric driving by counterpropagating Laguerre-Gaussian beams carrying equal and opposite orbital angular momenta, the system realizes supersolid phases coexisting with persistent superfluid circulation. Specifically, we obtain a supersolid state if we start with a BEC of winding number as well as supersolid packets with coherent superpositions of two different BEC values. Under asymmetric pumping, realized with Laguerre-Gaussian beams of different orbital angular momenta, chiral symmetry is broken in the system, resulting in asymmetric cavity field amplitudes, directional density modulations, and tunable rotational dynamics of the resulting supersolid lattice. This leads to rotating supersolid density structures for a single winding-number state, and rotating wave packets for an initial superposition of rotational eigenstates. Finally, we probe the presence of Goldstone and Higgs modes, which can be observed using minimally destructive measurements of the cavity output spectrum. Our mean-field theory reveals interference-driven rotation without physical stirring, and distinguishes our work from prior static cavity supersolids. Our results establish the ring cavity annular BEC as a versatile platform for generating chiral quantum matter, implementing rotation-sensing devices, and generating atomtronic circuits with supersolids.
