Recent advances in realizing nearly degenerate dipolar gases in optical lattices have enabled the study of quantum systems with long-range anisotropic interactions. Here, we investigate hard-core dipolar bosons on a two-dimensional square lattice described by an extended Bose--Hubbard model. Using path-integral quantum Monte Carlo simulations at fixed azimuthal angle
φ=45∘, we investigate density instabilities arising from first-order phase transitions. We start by mapping the ground-state phase diagram at half filling as a function of dipolar interaction strength and polar angle
θ. For weak interactions, the system remains superfluid for all
θ. Above a critical interaction strength, the superfluid phase becomes unstable and gives way to checkerboard, stripe, or incompressible phases depending on
θ. For
θ≳62∘, we find that half filling becomes unstable and only the empty state,
n=0, and the fully filled state,
n=1, are stable. Unlike recent experimental reports of a self-bound insulator at half filling, the homogeneous ground state does not support such a phase, but instead exhibits a direct first-order transition between
n=0 and
n=1. At finite temperature, thermal fluctuations shift the onset of density instabilities to larger
θ and stabilize intermediate fillings in the regime where half filling is unstable in the ground state. This leads to phase-separated states consisting of empty and fully filled regions that resemble the experimentally observed "self-bound insulator." In a harmonic trap, similar structures also emerge from phase coexistence associated with the underlying first-order transition.
The recent advances in creating nearly degenerate quantum dipolar gases in optical lattices are opening the doors for the exploration of equilibrium physics of quantum systems with anisotropic and long-range dipolar interactions. In this paper we study the zero- and finite-temperature phase diagrams of a system of hard-core dipolar bosons at half-filling, trapped in a two-dimensional square optical lattice. The dipoles are aligned parallel to one another and tilted out of the optical lattice plane by means of an external electric field. At zero-temperature, the system is a superfluid (SF) at all tilt angles θ provided that the strength of dipolar interaction is below a critical value . Upon increasing the interaction strength while keeping θ fixed, the SF phase is destabilized in favor of a checkerboard or a stripe solid (SS) depending on the tilt angle. We explore the nature of the phase transition between the two solid phases, identifying a region of metastable emulsion states intervening between the two solid lobes. Additionally, we study the stability of these quantum phases against thermal fluctuations and find that the SS is the most robust, making it the best candidate for experimental observation.
Microwave-dressed polar molecules offer a route to lattice quantum simulators in which the angular form of long-range dipolar interactions, not only their overall strength, can be engineered. We study this setting in a minimal hard-core Bose lattice model on a square optical lattice, with particles interacting through a sign-changing non-axisymmetric dipolar tail \mathcal V(\mathbf r)\propto (x^2-y^2)/(x^2+y^2)^{5/2} that is repulsive along one lattice axis and attractive along the other. Using worm-algorithm path-integral quantum Monte Carlo simulations, supported by a hard-core spin mapping and a Gutzwiller soft-mode diagnostic, we find two regimes controlled by t/V: at larger t/V the system remains superfluid but develops a pronounced directional stiffness anisotropy, while at smaller t/V it forms a stripe solid selected in the (q,0) axial family, corresponding to real-space stripes parallel to y. The leading ordering wave vector remains in this axial family but reorganizes with filling, showing that the robust ordered object is a family of stripe states rather than one fixed commensurate Bragg peak. Near the closure of the stripe lobe, averaged observables can mimic a narrow supersolid signal; measurement-resolved stripe structure-factor histograms instead reveal first-order switching between superfluid and stripe-solid sectors. NaCs lattice estimates place the relevant V/t window within reach of modest effective dressed dipole moments, linking the predicted stripe-family order and its experimental diagnostics to accessible molecular quantum-simulation scales.
We show anisotropy of the dipole interaction between magnetic atoms or polar molecules can stabilize new quantum phases in an optical lattice. Using a well-controlled numerical method based on the tensor network algorithm, we calculate the phase diagram of the resultant effective Hamiltonian in a two-dimensional square lattice---an anisotropic Hubbard model of hard-core bosons with attractive interaction in one direction and repulsive interaction in the other direction. Besides the conventional superfluid and the Mott insulator states, we find the striped and the checkerboard charge-density-wave states and the supersolid phase that interconnect the superfluid and the striped solid states. The transition to the supersolid phase has a mechanism different from the case of the soft-core Bose-Hubbard model.
This thesis is devoted to the study of dipolar lattice gases, i.e. many-body quantum systems of particles with a strong magnetic or electric dipole moment in optical lattices. Such systems are adequately described by the extended Hubbard model, which accounts for inter-site dipole-dipole interactions (DDI). These interactions, due to their long-range and anisotropic character, result in rich groundstate physics and intriguing dynamics as we illustrate in this thesis for the particular case of bosons in one- and quasi-one-dimensional lattices. We start by focusing on the non-trivial role played by the transversal confinement in one-dimensional dipolar lattice gases. We show that weakening the transversal confinement enhances beyond-nearest-neighbor interactions. Then, we analyze how this affects the ground-state physics of hard-core bosons with repulsive dipolar interactions and reveal quantitative differences to the standard case of the DDI falling off as 1/r^3 where r is the inter-particle distance. With attractive interactions, a new quantum liquid phase of self-bound lattice droplets emerges without the need for super-exchange processes. In the soft-core regime, proper consideration of the transversal confinement not only quantitatively shifts phase boundaries, but introduces novel phases with peculiar correlations in the site occupancies that may be either topological or topologically trivial. Furthermore, we study the effect of the transversal confinement on the dynamical properties of one-dimensional hard-core bosons at half-filling. We show in particular that the localization-to-delocalization transition induced by Hilbert space fragmentation resembles that of a system with an effective power-law decay different from 1/r^3 which can be controlled by the transversal confinement. To conclude this thesis, we analyze ground-state properties of hard-core dipolar bosons in a square ladder at unit rung filling with an energy bias between the two legs. We show that the interplay between the energy bias and the dipolar tail results in a peculiar topological quantum floating phase.
We analyse the ground-state quantum phase diagram of hardcore Bosons interacting with repulsive dipolar potentials. The bosons dynamics is described by the extended-Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian on a two-dimensional lattice. The ground state results from the interplay between the lattice geometry and the long-range interactions, which we account for by means of a classical spin mean-field approach limited by the size of the considered unit cells. This extended classical spin mean-field theory accounts for the long-range density-density interaction without truncation. We consider three different lattice geometries: square, honeycomb, and triangular. In the limit of zero hopping the ground state is always a devil’s staircase of solid (gapped) phases. Such crystalline phases with broken translational symmetry are robust with respect to finite hopping amplitudes. At intermediate hopping amplitudes, these gapped phases melt, giving rise to various lattice supersolid phases, which can have exotic features with multiple sublattice densities. At sufficiently large hoppings the ground state is a superfluid. The stability of phases predicted by our approach is gauged by comparison to the known quantum phase diagrams of the Bose-Hubbard model with nearest-neighbour interactions as well as quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the dipolar case on the square and triangular lattice. Our results are of immediate relevance for experimental realisations of self-organised crystalline ordering patterns in analogue quantum simulators, e.g., with ultracold dipolar atoms in an optical lattice.