Interacting bosons in generalized zig-zag and railroad-trestle models

We theoretically study the ground-state phase diagram of strongly interacting bosons on a generalized zig-zag ladder model, the rail-road trestle (RRT) model. By means of analytical arguments in the limits of decoupled chains and the case of vanishing fillings as well as extensive DMRG calculations we examine the rich interplay between frustration and interaction for various parameter regimes. We distinguish three different cases, the fully frustrated RRT model where the dispersion relation becomes doubly degenerate and an extensive chiral superfluid regime is found, the anti-symmetric RRT with alternating $\pi$ and $0$ fluxes through the ladder plaquettes and the sawtooth limit, which is closely related to the latter case. We study detailed phase diagrams which include besides different single component superfluids, the chiral superfluid phases, the two component superfluids and different gaped phases, with dimer and a charge-density wave order.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure

Three-body constrained bosons in double-well optical lattice

We analyse the ground-state properties of three-body constrained bosons in a one dimensional optical lattice with staggered hoppings analogous to the double well optical lattice. By considering attractive and repulsive on-site interactions between the bosons, we obtain the phase diagram which exhibits various quantum phases. Due to the double-well geometry and three-body constraint several gapped phases such as the Mott insulators and dimer/bond-order phases emerge at commensurate densities in the repulsive interaction regime. Attractive interaction leads to the pair formation which leads to the pair bond order phase at unit filling which resembles the valence-bond solid phase of composite bosonic pairs. At incommensurate densities we see the signatures of the gapless pair superfluid phase.Comment: 10 pages, 19 figure

Polar molecules in frustrated triangular ladders

Polar molecules in geometrically frustrated lattices may result in a very rich landscape of quantum phases, due to the non-trivial interplay between frustration, and two- and possibly three-body inter-site interactions. In this paper, we illustrate this intriguing physics for the case of hard-core polar molecules in frustrated triangular ladders. Whereas commensurate lattice fillings result in gapped phases with bond-order and/or density-wave order, at incommensurate fillings we find chiral-, two-component-, and pair-superfluids. We show as well that, remarkably, polar molecules in frustrated lattices allow, for the first time to our knowledge, for the observation of bond-ordered supersolids

Anomalous pairing of bosons: Effect of multi body interactions in optical lattice

An interesting first order type phase transition between Mott lobes has been reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 135302 (2012) for a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of attractive three-body interaction. We re-visit the scenario in a system of ultracold bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice using the density matrix renormalization group method and show that an unconventional pairing of particles occurs due to the competing two-body repulsive and three-body attractive interactions. This leads to a pair superfluid phase sandwiched between the Mott insulator lobes corresponding to densities $\rho=1$ and $\rho=3$ in the strongly interacting regime. We further extend our analysis to a two dimensional Bose-Hubbard model using the self consistent cluster-mean-field theory approach and confirm that the unconventional pair superfluid phase stabilizes in the region between the Mott lobes in contrast to the direct first order jump as predicted before. In the end we establish connection to the most general Bose-Hubbard model and analyse the fate of the pair superfluid phase in presence of an external trapping potential.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Supersolid in a one-dimensional model of hard-core bosons

We study a system of hardcore boson on a one-dimensional lattice with frustrated next-nearest neighbor hopping and nearest neighbor interaction. At half filling, for equal magnitude of nearest and next-nearest neighbor hopping, the ground state of this system exhibits a first order phase transition from a Bond-Ordered (BO) solid to a Charge-Density-Wave(CDW) solid as a function of the nearest neighbor interaction. Moving away from half filling we investigate the system at incommensurate densities, where we find a SuperSolid (SS) phase which has concurrent off-diagonal long range order and density wave order which is unusual in a system of hardcore bosons in one dimension. Using the finite-size Density-Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) method, we obtain the complete phase diagram for this model

Phases and phase transitions of frustrated hard-core bosons on a triangular ladder

We study hardcore bosons on a triangular ladder at half filling in the presence of a frustrating hopping term and a competing nearest neighbor repulsion $V$ which promotes crystallization. Using the finite-size density-matrix renormalization group method, we obtain the phase diagram which contains three phases: a uniform superfluid (SF), an insulating charge density wave (CDW) crystal and a bond ordered insulator (BO). We find that the transitions from SF to CDW and SF to BO are continuous in nature, with critical exponents varying continously along the phase boundaries, while the transition from CDW to BO is found to be first order. The phase diagram is also shown to contain an exactly solvable Majumdar Ghosh point, and re-entrant SF to CDW phase transitions.Comment: 10 pages, 16 figure