English

Symmetry-Breaking Topological Insulators in the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Bose-Hubbard Model

Quantum Gases 2019-11-12 v3 Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics Strongly Correlated Electrons Quantum Physics

Abstract

In this work, we study a one-dimensional model of interacting bosons coupled to a dynamical Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 field, the Z2\mathbb{Z}_2 Bose-Hubbard model, and analyze the interplay between spontaneous symmetry breaking and topological symmetry protection. In a previous work, we showed how this model exhibits a spontaneous breaking of the translational symmetry through a bosonic Peierls transition. Here we find how, at half filling, the resulting phase also displays topological features that coexist with the presence of long-range order and yields a topological bond order wave. Using both analytical and numerical methods, we describe the properties of this phase, showing that it cannot be adiabatically connected to a bosonic topological phase with vanishing Hubbard interactions, and thus constitutes an instance of an interaction-induced symmetry-breaking topological insulator.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1811.08392,
  title  = {Symmetry-Breaking Topological Insulators in the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ Bose-Hubbard Model},
  author = {Daniel González-Cuadra and Alexandre Dauphin and Przemysław R. Grzybowski and Paweł Wójcik and Maciej Lewenstein and Alejandro Bermudez},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.08392},
  year   = {2019}
}