Off-site trimer superfluid on a one-dimensional optical lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the off-site trimer superfluid phase in a one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model with three-body tunneling, using DMRG, revealing its stability and phase transitions, with implications for cold atom experiments.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic numerical verification of the off-site trimer superfluid phase's stability in the thermodynamic limit.

Findings

Off-site trimer superfluid exists in softcore Bose-Hubbard model.

Phase transitions include continuous and first-order types.

Identifies phases: superfluid, trimer superfluid, Mott insulator.

Abstract

The Bose-Hubbard model with an effective off-site three-body tunneling, characterized by jumps towards one another, between one atom on a site and a pair atoms on the neighborhood site, is studied systematically on a one-dimensional lattice, by using the density matrix renormalization group method. The off-site trimer superfluid, condensing at momentum $k=0$, emerges in the softcore Bose-Hubbard model but it disappears in the hardcore Bose-Hubbard model. Our results numerically verify that the off-site trimer superfluid phase derived in the momentum space from [Phys. Rev. A {\bf 81}, 011601(R) (2010)] is stable in the thermodynamic limit. The off-site trimer superfluid phase, the partially off-site trimer superfluid phase and the Mott insulator phase are found, as well as interesting phase transitions, such as the continuous or first-order phase transition from the trimer superfluid phase to the Mott insulator phase. Our results are helpful in realizing this novel off-site trimer superfluid phase by cold atom experiments.