Nonclassical states in strongly correlated bosonic ring ladders

We study the ground state of a bosonic ring ladder under a gauge flux in the vortex phase, corresponding to the case where the single-particle dispersion relation has two degenerate minima. By combining exact diagonalization and an approximate fermionization approach we show that the ground state of the system evolves from a fragmented state of two single-particle states at weak interparticle interactions to a fragmented state of two Fermi seas at large interactions. Fragmentation is inferred from the study of the eigenvalues of the reduced single-particle density matrix as well as from the calculation of the fidelity of the states. We characterize these nonclassical states by the momentum distribution, the chiral currents, and the current-current correlations.