Quantum phases of hardcore bosons with long-range interactions on a square lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the ground-state phase diagrams of hardcore bosons with long-range interactions on a square lattice, revealing how different interaction types influence the stability of checkerboard supersolid phases and the nature of phase transitions.

Contribution

The study compares the effects of nearest-neighbor and dipole-dipole interactions on phase stability using spin-wave and cluster mean-field theories, highlighting the role of quantum fluctuations and competition between orders.

Findings

Checkerboard supersolid absent with only short-range interactions due to quantum fluctuations.

Checkerboard supersolid appears with dipole-dipole interactions due to reduced competition.

Phase transition between superfluid and solid phases is first order near particle-hole symmetry.

Abstract

We study the ground-state phase diagrams of hardcore bosons with long-range interactions on a square lattice using the linear spin-wave theory and a cluster mean-field method. Specifically, we consider the two types of long-range interaction: One consists only of the nearest- and next-nearest-neighbor interactions, and the other is the dipole-dipole interaction that decays with the interparticle distance $r$ as $\sim r^{-3}$. It is known from previous analyses by quantum Monte Carlo methods that a checkerboard supersolid (CSS) is absent in the ground-state phase diagram of the former case while it is present in the latter. In the former, we find that quantum fluctuations around mean-field solutions are enhanced by the direct competition between the checkerboard and striped solid orders and that they destabilize the CSS phase. On the other hand, the emergence of the CSS phase in the latter case can be attributed to the absence of such a competition with other solid orders. We also show that the cluster mean-field method allows for the determination of phase boundaries in a precise quantitative manner when scaling with respect to the cluster size is taken into account. It is found that the phase transition between the superfluid and the solid (or CSS) is of the first order in the vicinity of the particle-hole symmetric line.