  We consider a Hubbard-like model of strongly-interacting spinless fermions
and hardcore bosons on a square lattice, such that nearest neighbor occupation
is forbidden. Stripes (lines of holes across the lattice forming antiphase
walls between ordered domains) are a favorable way to dope this system below
half-filling. The problem of a single stripe can be mapped to a spin-1/2 chain,
which allows understanding of its elementary excitations and calculation of the
stripe's effective mass for transverse vibrations. Using Lanczos exact
diagonalization, we investigate the excitation gap and dispersion of a hole on
a stripe, and the interaction of two holes. We also study the interaction of
two, three, and four stripes, finding that they repel, and the interaction
energy decays with stripe separation as if they are hardcore particles moving
in one (transverse) direction. To determine the stability of an array of
stripes against phase separation into particle-rich phase and hole-rich liquid,
we evaluate the liquid's equation of state, finding the stripe-array is not
stable for bosons but is possibly stable for fermions.
