Superfluidity of bosons in kagome lattices with frustration

Phys Rev Lett. 2012 Dec 28;109(26):265302. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.109.265302. Epub 2012 Dec 28.

Abstract

In this Letter we consider spinless bosons in a kagome lattice with nearest-neighbor hopping and on-site interaction, and the sign of hopping is inverted by insetting a π flux in each triangle of the kagome lattice so that the lowest single particle band is perfectly flat. We show that in the high-density limit, despite the infinite degeneracy of the single particle ground states, interaction will select out the Bloch state at the K point of the Brillouin zone for boson condensation at the lowest temperature. As the temperature increases, the single-boson superfluid order can be easily destroyed, while an exotic triple-boson paired superfluid order will remain. We establish that this trion superfluid exists in a broad temperature regime until the temperature is increased to the same order of hopping and then the system turns into normal phases. Finally, we show that time-of-flight measurement of the momentum distribution and its noise correlation can be used to distinguish these three phases.