Crystallization of a dilute atomic dipolar condensate

Abstract

We present a theory that explains the experimentally observed crystallization of a dilute dysprosium condensate into a lattice of droplets. The key ingredient of our theory is a conservative three-body interaction which stabilizes the droplets against collapse to high-density spikes. Our theory reproduces the experimental observations, and provides insight into the many-body properties of the droplet phase. Notably, we show that it is unlikely that a supersolid was obtained in experiments, however, our results suggest a strategy to realize this phase.