Extended Bose–Hubbard model with dipolar excitons

The Hubbard model constitutes one of the most celebrated theoretical frameworks of condensed-matter physics. It describes strongly correlated phases of interacting quantum particles confined in lattice potentials1,2. For bosons, the Hubbard Hamiltonian has been deeply scrutinized for short-range on-site interactions3–6. However, accessing longer-range couplings has remained elusive experimentally7. This marks the frontier towards the extended Bose–Hubbard Hamiltonian, which enables insulating ordered phases at fractional lattice fillings8–12. Here we implement this Hamiltonian by confining semiconductor dipolar excitons in an artificial two-dimensional square lattice. Strong dipolar repulsions between nearest-neighbour lattice sites then stabilize an insulating state at half filling. This characteristic feature of the extended Bose–Hubbard model exhibits the signatures theoretically expected for a chequerboard spatial order. Our work thus highlights that dipolar excitons enable controlled implementations of boson-like arrays with strong off-site interactions, in lattices with programmable geometries and more than 100 sites.