Interaction driven topological phase transitions of hardcore bosons on a two-leg ladder

We investigate the topological properties of hardcore bosons possessing nearest-neighbor repulsive interactions on a two-leg ladder. We show that by allowing nearest-neighbor dimerized interactions instead of hopping dimerization, the system exhibits topological phases and phase transitions under proper conditions. First, by assuming uniform hopping throughout the ladder, we show that when interaction along the legs are dimerized and the dimerization pattern is different in the legs, a trivial rung-Mott insulator to a topological bond order phase transition occurs as a function of the dimerization strength. However, for a fixed dimerization strength, the system exhibits a topological to trivial phase transition with increase in the rung hopping. A completely different scenario appears when the rung interaction is turned on. We obtain that for a ladder with uniform hopping, the repulsive interaction either turns the topological phase into a trivial rung-Mott insulator or a charge density wave phase. Such topological features are absent when the dimerization pattern in the nearest-neighbor interaction is considered to be identical in both the legs of the ladder. We numerically obtain the ground-state properties and also show the signatures of topological phase transitions through Thouless charge pumping.