Vortex and Meissner phases of strongly interacting bosons on a two-leg ladder

M. Piraud; F. Heidrich-Meisner; I. P. McCulloch; S. Greschner; T. Vekua; U. Schollwöck

doi:10.1103/PhysRevB.91.140406

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Vortex and Meissner phases of strongly interacting bosons on a two-leg ladder

M. Piraud, F. Heidrich-Meisner, I. P. McCulloch, S. Greschner, T. Vekua, U. Schollwöck

DOI 10.1103/PhysRevB.91.140406 · Physical Review B

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Abstract

We establish the phase diagram of the strongly interacting Bose-Hubbard model defined on a two-leg ladder geometry in the presence of a homogeneous flux. Our work is motivated by a recent experiment [M. Atala et al., Nat. Phys. 10, 588 (2014)], which studied the same system, in the complementary regime of weak interactions. Based on extensive density matrix renormalization group simulations and a bosonization analysis, we fully explore the parameter space spanned by filling, interleg tunneling, and flux. As a main result, we demonstrate the existence of gapless and gapped Meissner and vortex phases, with the gapped states emerging in Mott-insulating regimes. We calculate experimentally accessible observables such as chiral currents and vortex patterns.