Transport induced melting of crystals of Rydberg dressed atoms in a one dimensional lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the phase diagram of Rydberg dressed atoms in a one-dimensional lattice, revealing a devil's staircase structure of Mott insulators and analyzing melting transitions influenced by kinetic energy.

Contribution

It provides analytical expressions for phase boundaries and combines strong coupling expansion with numerical simulations to explore melting of insulating phases.

Findings

Devil's staircase structure with Mott insulators at rational fillings

Analytical phase boundary expressions match numerical results

Melting points vary widely depending on filling fraction denominator

Abstract

We discuss the many-body physics of an ensemble of Rydberg dressed atoms with van der Waals dipole-dipole interactions in a one-dimensional lattice. Using a strong coupling expansion and numerical density-matrix renormalisation group simulations, we calculate the many-body phase diagram. A devil's staircase structure emerges with Mott-insulating phases at any rational filling fraction. Closed analytic expressions are given for the phase boundaries in second order of the tunnelling amplitude and shown to agree very well with the numerical results. The transition point where the incompressible phases melt due to the kinetic energy term depends strongly on the denominator of the filling fraction and varies over many orders of magnitude between different phases.