Supersolid State of Ultracold Fermions in Optical Lattice

Abstract

We study ultracold fermionic atoms trapped in an optical lattice with harmonic confinement by dynamical mean-field approximation. It is demonstrated that a supersolid state, where an s-wave superfluid coexists with a density-wave state with a checkerboard pattern, is stabilized by attractive onsite interactions on a square lattice. Our new finding here is that a confining potential plays an invaluable role in stabilizing the supersolid state. We establish a rich phase diagram at low temperatures, which clearly shows how an insulator, a density wave and a superfluid compete with each other to produce an interesting domain structure. Our results shed light on the possibility of the supersolid state in fermionic optical lattice systems.