Bond-order density wave phases in dimerized extended Bose-Hubbard models

The Bose-Hubbard model (BHM) has been widely explored to develop a profound understanding of the strongly correlated behavior of interacting bosons. Quantum simulators not only allow the exploration of the BHM but also extend it to models with interesting phenomena such as gapped phases with multiple orders and topological phases. In this work, an extended Bose-Hubbard model involving a dimerized one-dimensional model of long-range interacting hard-core bosons is studied. Bond-order density wave phases (BODW) are characterized in terms of their symmetry breaking and topological properties. At certain fillings, interactions combined with dimerized hoppings give rise to an emergent symmetry-breaking leading to BODW phases, which differs from the case of non-interacting models that require an explicit breaking of the symmetry. Specifically, the BODW phase at filling rho = 1/3 possesses no analog in the noninteracting model in terms of its symmetry-breaking properties and the unit cell structure. Upon changing the dimerization pattern, the system realizes topologically trivial BODW phases. At filling rho = 1/4, on-site density modulations are shown to stabilize the topological BODW phase. Our work provides the bridge between interacting and noninteracting BODW phases and highlights the significance of long-range interactions in a dimerized lattice by showing unique BODW phases that do not exist in the noninteracting model.