Self-organized bosonic domain walls

Abstract

Hard-core bosons on honeycomb lattice ribbons with zigzag edges are studied using exact numerical simulations. We map out the phase diagrams of ribbons with different widths, which contain superfluid and insulator phases at various fillings. We show that charge domain walls are energetically favorable, in sharp contrast to the more typical occupation of a set of sites on a single sublattice of the bipartite geometry at ρ=1/2 filling. This “self-organized domain wall” separates two charge-density-wave regions with opposite Berry curvatures. Associated with the change of topological properties, superfluid transport occurs down the domain wall. Our results provide a concrete context to observe bosonic topological phenomena and can be simulated experimentally using bosonic cold atoms trapped in designed optical lattices.