Supersolidity of lattice bosons immersed in strongly correlated Rydberg dressed atoms

Abstract

Recent experiments have illustrated that long range two-body interactions can be induced by laser coupling atoms to highly excited Rydberg states. Stimulated by this achievement, we study supersolidity of lattice bosons in an experimentally relevant situation. In our setup, we consider two-component atoms on a square lattice, where one species is weakly dressed to an electronically high-lying (Rydberg) state, generating a tunable, soft-core shape long-range interaction. Interactions between atoms of the second species and between the two species are characterized by local inter- and intra-species interactions. Using a dynamical mean-field calculation, we find that interspecies onsite interactions can stabilize a pronounced region of supersolid phases. This is characterized by two distinctive types of supersolids, where the bare species forms supersolid phases that are immersed in strongly correlated quantum phases, i.e. a crystalline solid or supersolid of the dressed atoms. We show that the interspecies interaction leads to a roton-like instability in the bare species and therefore is crucially important to the supersolid formation. We provide a detailed calculation of the interaction potential to show how our results can be explored under current experimental conditions.