Equilibrium and non-equilibrium phases of microwave-dressed polar molecules beyond rotational symmetries

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2606.30589v1
• Date: Mon, 29 Jun 2026 17:32:04 GMT
• Title: Equilibrium and non-equilibrium phases of microwave-dressed polar molecules beyond rotational symmetries
• Abstract summary: Microwave-dressing of polar molecules permits tune both the strength and the angular structure of long-range interactions.<n>We show experimentally observed droplet arrays emerge as a metastable non-equilibrium state.<n>A crystalline phase of molecules, predicted for antidipolar interactions, is absent under conditions of recent experiments.
• Score: 0.0
• License: http://arxiv.org/licenses/nonexclusive-distrib/1.0/
• Abstract: Recent experiments on molecular droplets have opened a new frontier of self-organization in strongly dipolar quantum matter. Microwave-dressing of polar molecules permits to tune both the strength and the angular structure of long-range interactions, potentially promoting a rich spectrum of quantum phases, from superfluid droplets with varying geometry and insulating or supersolid droplet arrays to strongly correlated crystals of individual molecules. Using path-integral Monte Carlo simulations of large molecular ensembles, we demonstrate that experimentally observed droplet arrays emerge as a metastable non-equilibrium state from the quenching of a gas-droplet phase transition under entirely broken rotational symmetry of the microwave-induced interaction potential. We moreover find that a crystalline phase of molecules, predicted for antidipolar interactions, is absent under conditions of recent experiments. This is traced back to the lack of angular symmetry in currently employed microwave-dressing, which qualitatively reshapes the many-body energy landscape and cannot be captured by effective scalar interaction parameters. Our results provide the first direct comparison of ab initio simulations and experiments and establish interaction anisotropy as a key aspect of molecular quantum gases.

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