Last year, using ultracold dysprosium atoms, researchers created the first 2D supersolid—a weird quantum material that has the ordered structure of a solid but that can flow like a frictionless fluid. That 2D supersolid resembled a long, thin rhomboid, leaving open the question of whether 2D supersolids could be molded into other geometries. Now, Thomas Bland of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and colleagues give a positive answer to this question by theoretically and experimentally demonstrating a disk-shaped supersolid [1]. The team, which includes members of the group behind the earlier demonstration, says that such a 2D supersolid could be used to study quantum vortices, a key feature of supersolids’ superfluid behavior.
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