Weak First-Order Superfluid-Solid Quantum Phase Transitions

A Kuklov
Nikolai Prokof'ev, University of Massachusetts - Amherst
Boris Svistunov, University of Massachusetts - Amherst

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This is the pre-published version harvested from ArXiv. The published version is located at http://prl.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v93/i23/e230402

Abstract

We study superfluid-solid zero-temperature transitions in two-dimensional lattice boson-spin models using worm-algorithm Monte Carlo simulations. We observe that such transitions are typically first order with the exception of special high-symmetry points which require fine-tuning in the Hamiltonian parameter space. We present evidence that the superfluid-checkerboard solid and superfluid–valence-bond solid transitions at half-integer filling factor are extremely weak first-order transitions and in small systems can be confused with continuous or high-symmetry points.