Miscibility-immiscibility transition of strongly interacting bosonic mixtures in optical lattices
Phys. Rev. A 112, 023313 – Published 11 August, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/r52b-bsrd
Abstract
Interaction plays a key role in the mixing properties of a multicomponent system. The miscibility-immiscibility transition (MIT) in a weakly interacting mixture of Bose gases is predominantly determined by the strengths of the intra- and intercomponent two-body contact interactions. However, in the strongly interacting regime interaction-induced processes become relevant. Despite previous studies on bosonic mixtures in optical lattices, the effects of the interaction-induced processes on the MIT remains unexplored. In this work, we investigate the MIT in the strongly interacting phases of two-component bosonic mixture trapped in a homogeneous two-dimensional square optical lattice. Particularly we examine the MIT condition when both the components are in superfluid, one-body staggered superfluid, or supersolid phases. Our study uncovers that MIT condition is significantly shaped by the interplay of competing nonlocal intra- and intercomponent density-induced tunneling effects, as well as off-site interactions. Notably, we demonstrate that the MIT condition for the staggered superfluid phase exhibits an inequality that is inverted compared to the conventional MIT condition associated with superfluid or supersolid phases driven by local contact interactions. In addition, we present the phase diagram of the Bose-Hubbard model incorporating nonlocal processes, derived using a site-decoupling mean-field approach with the Gutzwiller ansatz. Our study contributes to the better understanding of miscibility properties of multicomponent systems in the strongly interacting regime.