A review of Monte Carlo simulations for the Bose–Hubbard model with diagonal disorder

We review the physics of the Bose–Hubbard model with disorder in the chemical potential focusing on recently published analytical arguments in combination with quantum Monte Carlo simulations. Apart from the superfluid and Mott insulator phases that can occur in this system without disorder, disorder allows for an additional phase, called the Bose glass phase. The topology of the phase diagram is subject to strong theorems proving that the Bose Glass phase must intervene between the superfluid and the Mott insulator and implying a Griffiths transition between the Mott insulator and the Bose glass. The full phase diagrams in 3d and 2d are discussed, and we zoom in on the insensitivity of the transition line between the superfluid and the Bose glass in the close vicinity of the tip of the Mott insulator lobe. We briefly comment on the established and remaining questions in the 1d case, and give a short overview of numerical work on related models.     

Phase diagram for a Bose-Einstein condensate moving in an optical lattice

The stability of superfluid currents in a system of ultracold bosons was studied using a moving optical lattice. Superfluid currents in a very weak lattice become unstable when their momentum exceeds 0.5 recoil momentum. Superfluidity vanishes already for zero momentum as the lattice deep reaches the Mott insulator (MI) phase transition. We study the phase diagram for the disappearance of superfluidity as a function of momentum and lattice depth between these two limits. Our phase boundary extrapolates to the critical lattice depth for the superfluid-to-MI transition with 2% precision. When a one-dimensional gas was loaded into a moving optical lattice a sudden broadening of the transition between stable and unstable phases was observed.     

Interference of atomic levels and superfluid-Mott insulator phase transitions in a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate

The superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition in a Bose-Einstein condensate of neutral atoms with doubly degenerate internal ground states in an optical lattice is theoretically investigated. The optical lattice is created by two counterpropagating linearly polarized laser beams with the angle theta between the polarization vectors (lin-angle-lin configuration). The phase diagram of the system and the critical values of the parameters are worked out. It is shown that the sign of the detuning plays an important role and that there is a strong suppression of the Mott transition in the case of blue detuning. Varying the laser intensity and/or the angle theta one can manipulate the Mott insulator to superfluid quantum phase transition as well as prepare the condensate in physically distinguishable "ferromagnetic" and "antiferromagnetic" superfluid states.     

Spinor bosonic atoms in optical lattices: symmetry breaking and fractionalization

We study superfluid and Mott insulator phases of cold spin-1 Bose atoms with antiferromagnetic interactions in an optical lattice, including a usual polar condensate phase, a condensate of singlet pairs, a crystal spin nematic phase, and a spin singlet crystal phase. We suggest a possibility of exotic fractionalized phases of spinor Bose-Einstein condensates and discuss them in the language of Z2 lattice gauge theory.     

Mean-field phase diagram for Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonians with random hopping

The zero temperature phase diagram for ultracold bosons in a random 1D potential is obtained through a site decoupling mean-field scheme performed over a Bose-Hubbard (BH) Hamiltonian, whose hopping term is considered as a random variable. As for the model with random on-site potential, the presence of disorder leads to the appearance of a Bose glass phase. The different phases—i.e., Mott insulator, superfluid, and Bose glass—are characterized in terms of condensate fraction and superfluid fraction. Furthermore, the boundary of the Mott lobes is related to an off-diagonal Anderson model featuring the same disorder distribution as the original BH Hamiltonian.     

Superfluid to Mott‐insulator transition in an anisotropic two‐dimensional optical lattice

We study the superfluid to Mott‐insulator transition of bosons in an optical anisotropic lattice by employing the Bose‐Hubbard model living on a two‐dimensional lattice with anisotropy parameter κ. The compressible superfluid state and incompressible Mott‐insulator (MI) lobes are efficiently described analytically, using the quantum U(1) rotor approach. The ground state phase diagram showing the evolution of the MI lobes is quantified for arbitrary values of κ, corresponding to various kind of lattices: from square, through rectangular to almost one‐dimensional.     

Random on-site interactions versus random potential in ultra cold atoms in optical lattices

We consider the physics of lattice bosons in the presence of either disordered on-site chemical potential or disordered on-site interparticle interactions. By means of analytical results using strong-coupling expansion, and numerical results based on quantum Monte Carlo calculations, we show that important qualitative changes in the zero temperature phase diagram are observed when comparing both cases. Although for both types of disorder superfluid, Mott-insulator and Bose-glass phases may be found, we show that in the case of random interactions the Mott-insulating regions shrink and eventually vanish for any finite disorder strength beyond a sufficiently large filling factor. Furthermore, at low values of the chemical potential both the superfluid and Mott insulator are stable towards the formation of a Bose-glass, leading to a possibly non-trivial tricritical point. We discuss possible experimental realizations of both types of disorder in the context of ultra cold atomic gases in optical lattices. PACS 03.75.Lm; 03.75.Ss; 05.30.Jp; 32.80.Pj     

Noise correlations of fermions and hard core bosons in a quasi-periodic potential

We use Hanbury-Brown-Twiss interferometry (HBTI) to study various quantum phases of hard core bosons (HCBs) and ideal fermions confined in a one-dimensional quasi-periodic (QP) potential. For HCBs, the QP potential induces a cascade of Mott-like band-insulator phases in the extended regime, in addition to the Mott insulator, Bose glass, and superfluid phases. At critical filling factors, the appearance of these insulating phases is heralded by a peak to dip transition in the interferogram, which reflects the fermionic aspect of HCBs. On the other hand, ideal fermions in the extended phase display various complexities of incommensurate structures such as devil’s staircases and Arnold tongues. In the localized phase, the HCB and the fermion correlations are identical except for the sign of the peaks. Finally, we demonstrate that HBTI provides an effective method to distinguish Mott and glassy phases.     

Off-site trimer superfluid on a one-dimensional optical lattice

The Bose-Hubbard model with an effective off-site three-body tunneling,characterized by jumps towards one another,between one atom on a site and a pair atoms on the neighborhood site,is studied systematically on a one-dimensional(1D) lattice,by using the density matrix renormalization group method.The off-site trimer superfluid,condensing at momentum k = 0,emerges in the softcore Bose-Hubbard model but it disappears in the hardcore Bose-Hubbard model.Our results numerically verify that the off-site trimer superfluid phase derived in the momentum space from[Phys.Rev.A81,011601(R)(2010)]is stable in the thermodynamic limit.The off-site trimer superfluid phase,the partially off-site trimer superfluid phase and the Mott insulator phase are found,as well as interesting phase transitions,such as the continuous or first-order phase transition from the trimer superfluid phase to the Mott insulator phase.Our results are helpful in realizing this novel off-site trimer superfluid phase by cold atom experiments.     

Quantum phase transition of cold atoms trapped in optical lattices

We review our recent theoretical advances in phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices, such as triangular lattice, honeycomb lattice, and Kagomé lattice. By employing the new developed numerical methods called dynamical cluster approximation and cellular dynamical mean-field theory, the properties in different phases of cold atoms in optical lattices are studied, such as density of states, Fermi surface and double occupancy. On triangular lattice, a reentrant behavior of phase translation line between Fermi liquid state and pseudogap state is found due to the Kondo effect. We find the system undergoes a second order Mott transition from a metallic state into a Mott insulator state on honeycomb lattice and triangular Kagomé lattice. The stability of quantum spin Hall phase towards interaction on honeycomb lattice with spin-orbital coupling is systematically discussed. And we investigate the transition from quantum spin Hall insulator to normal insulator in Kagomé lattice which includes a nearest-neighbor intrinsic spin-orbit coupling and a trimerized Hamiltonian. In addition, we propose the experimental protocols to observe these phase transition of cold atoms in optical lattices.     

Staggered-vortex superfluid of ultracold bosons in an optical lattice

We show that the dynamics of cold bosonic atoms in a two-dimensional square optical lattice produced by a bichromatic light-shift potential is described by a Bose-Hubbard model with an additional effective staggered magnetic field. In addition to the known uniform superfluid and Mott insulating phases, the zero-temperature phase diagram exhibits a novel kind of finite-momentum superfluid phase, characterized by a quantized staggered rotational flux. An extension for fermionic atoms leads to an anisotropic Dirac spectrum, which is relevant to graphene and high-T(c) superconductors.     

Transition from a strongly interacting 1d superfluid to a Mott insulator

We study 1D trapped Bose gases in the strongly interacting regime. The systems are created in an optical lattice and are subject to a longitudinal periodic potential. Bragg spectroscopy enables us to investigate the excitation spectrum in different regimes. In the superfluid phase a broad continuum of excitations is observed which calls for an interpretation beyond the Bogoliubov spectrum taking into account the effect of strong interactions. In the Mott insulating phase a discrete spectrum is measured. Both phases are compared to the 3D situation and to the crossover regime from 1D to 3D. The coherence length and coherent fraction of the gas are measured in all configurations. We observe signatures for increased fluctuations characteristic for 1D systems. Moreover, the collective oscillations cease near the transition to the Mott insulator phase.     

Winding up of the wave-function phase by an insulator-to-superfluid transition in a ring of coupled Bose-Einstein condensates

We study phase transition from the Mott insulator to superfluid in a periodic optical lattice. Kibble-Zurek mechanism predicts buildup of winding number through random walk of BEC phases, with the step size scaling as a third root of transition rate. We confirm this and demonstrate that this scaling accounts for the net winding number after the transition.     

Energy Spectrum of Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates in Optical Lattices

With the method of Green's function, we investigate the energy spectra of two-component ultracold bosonic atoms in optical lattices. We find that there are two energy bands for each component. The critical condition of the superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition is determined by the energy band structure. We also find that the nearest neighboring and on-site interactions fail to change the structure of energy bands, but shift the energy bands only. According to the conditions of the phase transitions, three stable superfluid and Mott insulating phases can be found by adjusting the experiment parameters. We also discuss the possibility of observing these new phases and their transitions in further experiments.     

Superfluid-Mott-Insulator Phase Transition of Bosons in an Optical Lattice

The Bose-Hubbard model describing interacting bosons in an optical lattice is reduced to a simple spin-1 XY model with single-ion anisotropy in the vicinity of the Mort phase. We propose a mean-field theory based on a constraint SU（3） pseudo-boson representation on the effective model to study the properties of the superfluid-Mott-insulator phase transition. By calculating the elementary excitation spectra and the average particle number tluctuation in the Brillouin zone center, we lind that the energy gaps vanish continuously around （JXY/Jz）c≈ 0.175 and （JxY/Jz）c ≈ 0.094 for 2D and 3D cubic lattices respectively, where the superfluid order parameters come up from zero and the Mort insulator state changes into a superfluid state.     

Quantum phases of dipolar bosons in optical lattices

The ground state of dipolar bosons placed in an optical lattice is analyzed. We show that the modification of experimentally accessible parameters can lead to the realization and control of different quantum phases, including superfluid, supersolid, Mott insulator, checkerboard, and collapse phases.     

Optomechanical effects in superfluid properties of BEC in an optical lattice

We investigate the effects of a movable mirror (cantilever) of an optical cavity on the superfluid properties and the Mott phase boundary of a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) in an optical lattice. The Bloch energy, effective mass, Bogoliubov energy and the superfluid fraction are modified due to the mirror motion. The mirror motion is also found to modify the Mott-superfluid phase boundaries. This study reveals that the mirror emerges as a new handle to coherently control the superfluid properties of the BEC.     

Quantum phase transition of ultracold bosons in double-well optical lattices

We study the superfluid-to-Mott insulator transition of bosons in a two-legged ladder optical lattice of a type accessible in current experiments on double-well optical lattices. The zero-temperature phase diagram is mapped out, with a focus on its dependence upon interchain hopping and the tilt between double wells. We find that the unit-filling Mott phase exhibits a nonmonotonic behavior as a function of the tilt parameter, producing a reentrant phase transition between the Mott insulator and superfluid phases.     

Phase diagrams of bosonic AB<Subscript>n</Subscript> chains

The AB_{N ?1} chain is a system that consists of repeating a unit cell withN siteswhere between the A and B sites there is an energy difference ofλ. Weconsidered bosons in these special lattices and took into account the kinetic energy, thelocal two-body interaction, and the inhomogenous local energy in the Hamiltonian. We foundthe charge density wave (CDW) and superfluid and Mott insulator phases, and constructedthe phase diagram for N =2 and 3 atthe thermodynamic limit. The system exhibited insulator phases for densitiesρ =α/N, with α being an integer. Weobtained that superfluid regions separate the insulator phases for densities larger thanone. For any N value, we found that for integer densitiesρ, thesystem exhibits ρ +1 insulator phases, a Mott insulator phase, and ρ CDW phases. Fornon-integer densities larger than one, several CDW phases appear.     

Formation of spatial shell structure in the superfluid to Mott insulator transition

We report on the direct observation of the transition from a compressible superfluid to an incompressible Mott insulator by recording the in-trap density distribution of a Bosonic quantum gas in an optical lattice. Using spatially selective microwave transitions and spin-changing collisions, we are able to locally modify the spin state of the trapped quantum gas and record the spatial distribution of lattice sites with different filling factors. As the system evolves from a superfluid to a Mott insulator, we observe the formation of a distinct shell structure, in good agreement with theory.