PHASE TRANSITION OF BOSONS DRIVEN BY A STAGGERED GAUGE FIELD IN AN OPTICAL LATTICE

Abstract

We have studied the ground state properties of hard-core bosons in a two-leg optical ladder in the presence of uniform and staggered frustrations due to an artificial gauge field. By calculating the ground state via the Lanczos method, we find first-order phase transitions tuned by the staggered gauge field between the Meissner and the vortex states. The momentum distributions show that the Meissner state has edge and staggered currents, while the vortex states have vortex-solid or vortex-glass phases in the presence of a staggered field.