We examine a bosonic two-leg ladder model subject to a magnetic flux and especially focus on a regime where the lower-energy band has two minima. By using a low-energy field theory approach, we study several issues discussed in the system: the existence of local patterns in density and current, chiral-current reversal, and the effect of a nearest-neighbor interaction along the rung direction. In our formalism, the local patterns are interpreted as a result of breaking of discrete symmetry. The chiral-current reversal occurs through a competition between a current component determined at a commensurate vortex density causing an enlargement of the unit cell and another component, which is proportional to the magnetic-field doping from the corresponding commensurate flux. The nearest-neighbor interaction along the rung direction available with the technique on a synthetic dimension is shown to favor a population-imbalance solution in an experimentally relevant regime.

• Received 25 March 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.93.053629