Mott-insulator-like Bose-Einstein condensation in a tight-binding system of interacting bosons with a flat band

Abstract

We propose a class of tight-binding systems of interacting bosons with a flat band, which are exactly solvable in the sense that one can explicitly write down the unique ground state. The ground state is expressed in terms of local creation operators and apparently resembles that of a Mott insulator. Based on an exact representation in terms of a classical loop-gas model, we conjecture that the ground state may exhibit quasi Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) and genuine BEC in dimension 2 and in dimension 3 or higher, respectively, still keeping Mott-insulator-like character. Our Monte Carlo simulation of the loop-gas model strongly supports this conjecture, i.e., the ground state undergoes a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition and exhibits quasi-BEC in two dimensions.