It has been shown that dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates that are tightly trapped along the polarization direction can feature a rich phase diagram. In this paper we show that finite temperature can assist in accessing parts of the phase diagram that otherwise appear hard to realize due to excessively large densities and number of atoms being required. These include honeycomb and stripe phases both unconfined and with a finite extent. To map out a phase-diagram, we employ both variational analysis and full numerical calculations solving the finite-temperature extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation (TeGPE). Furthermore, we exhibit real-time evolution simulations leading to such states. We account for the effect of thermal fluctuations by means of Bogoliubov theory, employing the local density approximation. We find that finite temperatures can lead to a significant decrease in the necessary particle number and density that might ultimately pave a route for future experimental realizations.

The beyond mean-field physics due to quantum fluctuations is often described with the Lee-Huang-Yang correction, which can be approximately written as a simple analytical expression in terms of the mean-field wave function employing local density approximation. This model has proven to be very successful in predicting the dynamics in dipolar Bose-Einstein condensates both qualitatively and quantitatively. Yet a small deviation between experimental results and the theoretical prediction has been observed when comparing experiment and theory of the phase boundary of a free-space quantum droplet. For this reason we revisit the theoretical description of quantum fluctuations in dipolar quantum gases. We study alternative cutoffs, compare them to experimental results, and discuss limitations.