Virtual defect mediated quantum melting in supersolids

Abstract

The current understanding of supersolid melting is largely based on mean-field theories predicting that such transitions arise from a structural energy minimization mechanism. Here, we show that soft-core quasi-one-dimensional supersolids stabilized by a shallow external lattice can instead melt at zero temperature into a superfluid phase with quasi-long-range positional order through the proliferation of virtual soliton--antisoliton pairs, leading to a Kosterlitz--Thouless transition. We derive the corresponding Renormalization Group equations from first principles and use them to determine the critical properties of the system. Remarkably, the proliferation of topological defects near criticality strongly renormalizes both the density modulation and the superfluidity behavior. The transition described is intrinsically a beyond mean-field effect, since the external lattice produces only a smooth crossover between weakly and strongly modulated states at the mean-field level.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{tsaloukidis2026virtual,
  title = {{Virtual defect mediated quantum melting in supersolids}},
  author = {Lazaros Tsaloukidis and Matheus Grossklags and Luca Salasnich and Alejandro Mendoza-Coto},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.34299},
  eprint = {2610.34299},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.34299},
  note = {CC BY 4.0},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - Virtual defect mediated quantum melting in supersolids
AU  - Lazaros Tsaloukidis
AU  - Matheus Grossklags
AU  - Luca Salasnich
AU  - Alejandro Mendoza-Coto
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/25
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.34299
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.34299
AB  - The current understanding of supersolid melting is largely based on mean-field theories predicting that such transitions arise from a structural energy minimization mechanism. Here, we show that soft-core quasi-one-dimensional supersolids stabilized by a shallow external lattice can instead melt at zero temperature into a superfluid phase with quasi-long-range positional order through the proliferation of virtual soliton--antisoliton pairs, leading to a Kosterlitz--Thouless transition. We derive the corresponding Renormalization Group equations from first principles and use them to determine the critical properties of the system. Remarkably, the proliferation of topological defects near criticality strongly renormalizes both the density modulation and the superfluidity behavior. The transition described is intrinsically a beyond mean-field effect, since the external lattice produces only a smooth crossover between weakly and strongly modulated states at the mean-field level.
ER  -

Abstract

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