Rapidly rotating boson molecules with long or short range repulsion: an exact diagonalization study

Abstract

The Hamiltonian for a small number, N <= 11, of bosons in a rapidly rotating harmonic trap, interacting via a short range (contact potential) or a long range (Coulomb) interaction, is studied via an exact diagonalization in the lowest Landau level. Our analysis shows that, for both low and high fractional fillings, the bosons localize and form rotating boson molecules (RBMs) consisting of concentric polygonal rings. Focusing on systems with the number of trapped atoms sufficiently large to form multi-ring bosonic molecules, we find that, as a function of the rotational frequency and regardless of the type of repulsive interaction, the ground-state angular momenta grow in specific steps that coincide with the number of localized bosons on each concentric ring. Comparison of the conditional probability distributions (CPDs) for both interactions suggests that the degree of crystalline correlations appears to depend more on the fractional filling nu than on the range of the interaction. The RBMs behave as nonrigid rotors, i.e., the concentric rings rotate independently of each other. At filling fractions nu < 1/2, we observe well developed crystallinity in the CPDs (two-point correlation functions). For larger filling fractions nu > 1/2, observation of similar molecular patterns requires consideration of even higher-order correlation functions.