Solids and Supersolids of Three-Body Interacting Polar Molecules on an Optical Lattice

We study the physics of cold polar molecules loaded into an optical lattice in the regime of strong three-body interactions, as put forward recently by Buchler et al. [Nature Phys. 3, 726 (2007)]. To this end, quantum Monte Carlo simulations, exact diagonalization, and a semiclassical approach are used to explore hard-core bosons on the 2D square lattice which interact solely by long-ranged three-body terms. The resulting phase diagram shows a sequence of solid and supersolid phases. Our findings are directly relevant for future experimental implementations and open a new route towards the discovery of a lattice supersolid phase in experiment.