Thermal phase transitions of supersolids in the extended Bose-Hubbard model

Abstract

We investigate numerically the finite-temperature phase diagrams of the extended Bose-Hubbard model in a two-dimensional square lattice. In particular, we focus on the melting of supersolid phases of two different crystal orderings, stripe and star orders, arising from the competition of the nearest- and next-nearest -neighbor interactions in the vicinity of quarter filling. The two crystal orders are the result of broken translational symmetry in either one or in both $x$, and $y$ directions. The broken gauge symmetry of the supersolids are found to be restored via a Kosterlitz-Thouless transition while the broken translational symmetries are restored via a single second-order phase transition, instead of two second-order transitions in the Ising universality class. On the other hand, the phase transitions between the star and stripe orders are first order in nature.