Meissner to vortex phase transition in a two-leg ladder in artificial gauge field

M Di Dio (1) , R Citro (2) , S de Palo (3, 1) , E Orignac (4) , M.-L Chiofalo (5)

1 DEMOCRITOS
2 Dipartamento di Fisica "E. R. Caianiello"
3 Dipartimento di Fisica Teorica [Trieste]
4 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon
5 Dipartimento di Fisica "E. Fermi"

We consider a two-leg boson ladder in artificial gauge field with hard-core intraleg and negligible interleg interactions. Using numerical simulations based on the Density Matrix Renormalization Group (DMRG) algorithm, combined with a bosonization approach, we study its commensurate-incommensurate transition to a vortex phase at a critical flux. We discuss the finite-size scaling behavior of the longitudinal current near the transition. For weak interchain bo-son hopping, the finite size scaling is in agreement with the predictions from bosonization.

Keywords: Commensurate-Incommensurate transition; finite-size scaling; artificial gauge fields

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Quantum Gases [cond-mat.quant-gas]; Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Strongly Correlated Electrons [cond-mat.str-el]

M Di Dio, R Citro, S de Palo, E Orignac, M.-L Chiofalo. Meissner to vortex phase transition in a two-leg ladder in artificial gauge field. The European Physical Journal. Special Topics, 2015, Novel Quantum Phases and Mesoscopic Physics in Quantum Gases, 224 (3), pp.525. ⟨10.1140/epjst/e2015-02382-2⟩. ⟨ensl-01145026⟩