Parafermion excitations in a superfluid of quasi-molecular chains

Abstract

We study a quantum phase transition in a system of dipoles confined in a stack of N identical one-dimensional lattices (tubes) polarized perpendicularly to the lattices. In this arrangement, the intra-lattice interaction is purely repulsive, preventing system collapse, and the inter-lattice interaction is attractive. The dipoles may represent polar molecules or indirect excitons. The transition separates two phases; in one of them, superfluidity (understood as algebraic decay of the corresponding correlation functions) takes place in each individual lattice, and in the other (chain superfluid) the order parameter is the product of bosonic operators from all lattices. We argue that in the presence of finite inter-lattice tunneling the transition belongs to the universality class of the q = N two-dimensional classical Potts model. For N = 2,3,4 the corresponding low-energy field theory is the model of Z _N parafermions perturbed by the thermal operator. The results of Monte Carlo simulations are consistent with these predictions. The detection scheme for the chain superfluid is outlined.