Many-body formation and dissociation of a dipolar chain crystal

Abstract

We propose an experimental scheme to effectively assemble chains of dipolar gases with a uniform length in a multi-layer system. The obtained dipolar chains can form a chain crystal with the system temperature easily controlled by the initial lattice potential and the external field strength during processing. When the density of chains increases, we further observe a second order quantum phase transition for the chain crystal to be dissociated toward layers of 2D crystal, where the quantum fluctuation dominates the classical energy and the compressibility diverges at the phase boundary. The experimental implication of such a dipolar chain crystal and its quantum phase transition is also discussed. © 2014 IOP Publishing Ltd and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.