Commensurate Two-Component Bosons in Optical Lattice: Groundstate Phase Diagram

Two sorts of bosons in an optical lattice at commensurate filling factors can form five stable superfluid and insulating groundstates with rich and non-trivial phase diagram. The structure of the groundstate diagram is established by mapping $d$-dimensional quantum system onto a $(d+1)$-dimensional classical loop-current model and Monte Carlo simulations of the latter. Surprisingly, the quantum phase diagram features, besides second-order lines, a first-order transition and two multi-critical points. We explain why first-order transitions are generic for models with paring interactions using microscopic and mean-field arguments.