Spontaneous Peierls dimerization and emergent bond order in one-dimensional dipolar gases

We investigate the effect of dipolar interactions in one-dimensional systems in connection with the possibility of observing exotic many-body effects with trapped atomic and molecular dipolar gases. By combining analytical and numerical methods, we show how the competition between short- and long-range interactions gives rise to frustrating effects which lead to the stabilization of spontaneously dimerized phases characterized by a bond-ordering. This genuine quantum order is sharply distinguished from Mott and spin-density wave phases, and can be unambiguously probed by measuring non local order parameters in-situ imaging techniques.
8 pages, 6 figures; version as published: Text added to improve readability; added extensive numerical data to support results already present in v1; section on the dipolar two-leg ladder removed for clarity; new plots and references added. Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. A