Under the conditions of superfluid-Mott-insulator criticality in two dimensions, the trapping centers--i.e., local potential wells and bumps--are generically characterized by an integer charge corresponding to the number of trapped particles (if positive) or holes (if negative). Varying the strength of the center leads to a transition between two competing ground states with charges differing by $\pm 1$. The hallmark of the transition scenario is a splitting of the number density distortion, $δn(r)$, into a half-integer core and a large halo carrying the complementary charge of $\pm 1/2$. The sign of the halo changes across the transition and the radius of the halo, $r_0$, diverges on the approach to the critical strength of the center, $V = V_c$, by the law $r_0 \propto |V-V_c|^{-\tildeν}$, with $\tildeν \approx 2.33(5)$.
We derive the equation of state of bosons in an optical lattice in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Near the density-driven Mott transition, the expression of the pressure P(μ,T) versus chemical potential and temperature is similar to that of a dilute Bose gas but with renormalized mass m^* and scattering length a^*. m^* is the mass of the elementary excitations at the quantum critical point governing the transition from the superfluid phase to the Mott insulating phase, while a^* is related to their effective interaction at low energy. We use a nonperturbative renormalization-group ap…
We derive the equation of state of a two-dimensional Bose gas in an optical lattice in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. We focus on the vicinity of the multicritical points where the quantum phase transition between the Mott insulator and the superfluid phase occurs at fixed density and belongs to the three-dimensional XY model universality class. Using a nonperturbative renormalization-group approach, we compute the pressure $P(μ,T)$ as a function of chemical potential and temperature. Our results compare favorably with a calculation based on the quantum O(2) model -- we find the same…
We study the Mott transition of a mixed Bose-Fermi system of ultracold atoms in an optical lattice, where the number of (spinless) fermions and bosons adds up to one atom per lattice, n_F+n_B=1. For weak interactions, a Fermi surface coexists with a Bose-Einstein condensate while for strong interaction the system is incompressible but still characterized by a Fermi surface of composite fermions. At the critical point, the spectral function of the fermions, A(k,w), exhibits a pseudo-gapped behavior, rising as |w| at the Fermi momentum, while in the Mott phase it is fully gapped. Taking into acc…
We investigate the effect of the trapping potential on the quantum phases of strongly correlated ultracold bosons in one-dimensional periodic and quasiperiodic optical lattices. By means of a decoupling meanfield approach, we characterize the ground state of the system and its behavior under variation of the harmonic trapping, as a function of the total number of atoms. For a small atom number the system shows an incompressible Mott-insulating phase, as the size of the cloud remains unaffected when the trapping potential is varied. When the quasiperiodic potential is added the system develops …
An ultracold gas of interacting fermionic atoms in a three-dimensional optical lattice is considered, where the lattice potential strength is periodically modulated. This non-equilibrium system is non-perturbatively described by means of a Keldysh-Floquet-Green's function approach for Mott-Hubbard systems employing a generalized dynamical mean field theory (DMFT). Strong repulsive interactions between different atoms lead to a Mott insulator state for the equilibrium system, but the additional external driving at zero temperature yields a non-equilibrium quantum critical behavior, where an inf…
We investigate the finite temperature charge density wave (CDW) transition of lattice Bose gases within optical cavities in the deep Mott-insulator limit. We find a new critical regime emerges at a temperature around one-half of the on-site interaction energy, where the first order CDW transition at low temperatures terminates at a critical point and changes to a second order one. By directly calculating the critical exponents and constructing the effective theory in the corresponding critical regime, we find the emergent criticality belongs to the five-dimensional Ising universality class. Di…
We consider a spin-orbit coupled configuration of spin-1/2 interacting bosons with equal Rashba and Dresselhaus couplings. The phase diagram of the system is discussed with special emphasis to the role of the interaction treated in the mean-field approximation. For a critical value of the density and of the Raman coupling we predict the occurrence of a characteristic tri-critical point separating the spin mixed, the phase separated and the single minimum states of the Bose gas. The corresponding quantum phases are investigated analyzing the momentum distribution, the longitudinal and transvers…
We present a universal theory for the critical behavior of an impurity at the two-dimensional superfluid-Mott insulator transition. Our analysis is motivated by a numerical study of the Bose-Hubbard model with an impurity site by Huang et al. (Phys. Rev. B 94, 220502 (2016)), who found an impurity phase transition as a function of the trapping potential. The bulk theory is described by the $O(2)$ symmetric Wilson-Fisher conformal field theory, and we model the impurity by a localized spin-1/2 degree of freedom. We also consider a generalized model by considering an $O(N)$ symmetric bulk theory…
We investigate the superfluid-insulator quantum phase transition of one-dimensional bosons with off-diagonal disorder by means of large-scale Monte-Carlo simulations. For weak disorder, we find the transition to be in the same universality class as the superfluid-Mott insulator transition of the clean system. The nature of the transition changes for stronger disorder. Beyond a critical disorder strength, we find nonuniversal, disorder-dependent critical behavior. We compare our results to recent perturbative and strong-disorder renormalization group predictions. We also discuss experimental im…
The time evolution of the out-of-equilibrium Mott insulator is investigated numerically through calculations of space-time resolved density and entropy profiles resulting from the release of a gas of ultracold fermionic atoms from an optical trap. For adiabatic, moderate and sudden switching-off of the trapping potential, the out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the Mott insulator is found to differ profoundly from that of the band insulator and the metallic phase, displaying a self-induced stability that is robust within a wide range of densities, system sizes and interaction strengths. The connect…
We study the finite temperature properties of two-component fermionic atoms trapped in a two-dimensional optical lattice. We apply the self-energy functional approach to the two-dimensional Hubbard model with a harmonic trapping potential, and systematically investigate the thermodynamic properties of this system. We find that entropy and grand potential provide evidence of a crossover between the Mott insulating and metallic phases at certain temperatures. In addition, we find that entropy exhibits a cusp-like anomaly at lower temperatures, suggesting a second or higher order antiferromagneti…
We investigate the finite temperature spin density wave (SDW) and charge density wave (CDW) transition of two-component lattice spinor Bose gases in optical lattices in the Mott-insulator limit. At the temperature scale around half of the on-site interaction energy, we find a new critical regime emerges and features, in particular, a new bicritical line and two critical lines associated with the finite temperature SDW-CDW, homogeneous-SDW, and homogeneous-CDW transition, respectively. Direct calculation of the critical exponents for the scaling behavior and investigating on the effective theor…
We show that the dilute Fermi gas quantum critical universality class quantitatively describes the Mott/metal crossover of the two-dimensional Hubbard model for temperatures somewhat less than (roughly half) the tunneling but much greater than (roughly twice) the superexchange energy. We calculate the observables expected to be universal near the transition --- density and compressibility --- with numerically exact determinantal quantum Monte Carlo. We find they are universal functions of the chemical potential. Despite arising from the strongly correlated regime of the Hubbard model, these fu…
We investigate the expansion of bosons and fermions in a homogeneous lattice after a sudden removal of the trapping potential using exact numerical methods. As a main result, we show that in one dimension, both bosonic and fermionic Mott insulators expand with the same velocity, irrespective of the interaction strength, provided the expansion starts from the ground state of the trapped gas. Furthermore, their density profiles become identical during the expansion: The asymptotic density dynamics is identical to that of initially localized, non-interacting particles, and the asymptotic velocity…
Critical behavior developed near a quantum phase transition, interesting in its own right, offers exciting opportunities to explore the universality of strongly-correlated systems near the ground state. Cold atoms in optical lattices, in particular, represent a paradigmatic system, for which the quantum phase transition between the superfluid and Mott insulator states can be externally induced by tuning the microscopic parameters. In this paper, we describe our approach to study quantum criticality of cesium atoms in a two-dimensional lattice based on in situ density measurements. Our research…
We present a controlled rare-weak-link theory of the superfluid-to-Bose/Mott glass transition in one-dimensional disordered systems. The transition has Kosterlitz-Thouless critical properties but may occur at an arbitrary large value of the Luttinger parameter $K$. In contrast to the scenario by Altman {\it et al.} [Phys. Rev. B {\bf 81}, 174528 (2010)], the hydrodynamic description is valid under the correlation radius and defines criticality via the renormalization of microscopically weak links, along the lines of Kane and Fisher [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 68}, 1220 (1992)]. The hallmark of the …
An interesting first order type phase transition between Mott lobes has been reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 109, 135302 (2012) for a two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of attractive three-body interaction. We re-visit the scenario in a system of ultracold bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice using the density matrix renormalization group method and show that an unconventional pairing of particles occurs due to the competing two-body repulsive and three-body attractive interactions. This leads to a pair superfluid phase sandwiched between the Mott insulator lobes correspond…
We study the entanglement entropy and entanglement spectrum of the paradigmatic Bose-Hubbard model, describing strongly correlated bosons on a lattice. The use of a controlled approximation - the slave-boson approach - allows us to study entanglement in all regimes of the model (and, most importantly, across its superfluid/Mott-insulator transition) at a minimal cost. We find that the area-law scaling of entanglement -- verified in all the phases -- exhibits a sharp singularity at the transition. The singularity is greatly enhanced when the transition is crossed at fixed, integer filling, due …
Exact diagonalization techniques are a powerful method for studying many-body problems. Here, we apply this method to systems of few bosons in an optical lattice, and use it to demonstrate the emergence of interesting quantum phenomena like fragmentation and coherence. Starting with a standard Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we first revise the characterization of the superfluid to Mott insulator transitions. We then consider an inhomogeneous lattice, where one potential minimum is made much deeper than the others. The Mott insulator phase due to repulsive on-site interactions then competes with the…
We study the Higgs mode of superfluid Bose gases in a three dimensional optical lattice, which emerges near the quantum phase transition to the Mott insulator at commensurate fillings. Specifically, we consider responses of the Higgs mode to temporal modulations of the onsite interaction and the hopping energy. In order to calculate the response functions including the effects of quantum and thermal fluctuations, we map the Bose-Hubbard model onto an effective pseudospin-one model and use a perturbative expansion based on the imaginary-time Green's function theory. We also include the effects …
We investigate the interplay of temperature and trap effects in cold particle systems at their quantum critical regime, such as cold bosonic atoms in optical lattices at the transitions between Mott-insulator and superfluid phases. The theoretical framework is provided by the one-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of an external trapping potential, and the trap-size scaling theory describing the large trap-size behavior at a quantum critical point. We present numerical results for the low-temperature behavior of the particle density and the density-density correlation function at t…
We study superfluid (SF) states of strongly interacting Bose-Bose mixtures with equal mass and intra-component interaction in optical lattices both in the presence and absence of a barrier potential (BP). We show that the SF order parameters obey the two-component nonlinear Schroedinger equation (NLSE) with not only cubic but also quintic nonlinearity in the vicinity of the first-order transitions to the Mott insulators with even fillings. In the case of no BP, we analyze solitary-wave (SW) solutions of the cubic-quintic NLSE. When the SF state changes from a ground state to a metastable one, …
Relativistic O(N) field theories are studied near the quantum critical point in two space dimensions. We compute dynamical correlations by large scale Monte Carlo simulations and numerical analytic continuation. In the ordered side, the scalar spectral function exhibits a universal peak at the Higgs mass. For N=3 and 4 we confirm its ω^3 rise at low frequency. On the disordered side, the spectral function exhibits a sharp gap. For N=2, the dynamical conductivity rises above a threshold at the Higgs mass (density gap), in the superfluid (Mott insulator) phase. For charged bosons, (Josephson arr…
We investigate the exact nature of the superfluid-to-Mott-insulator crossover for interacting bosons on an optical lattice in a one-dimensional, harmonic trap by high-precision density-matrix renormalization-group calculations. The results reveal an intermediate regime characterized by a cascade of microscopic steps. These arise as a consequence of individual boson "squeezing" events and display an even-odd alternation dependent on the trap symmetry. We discuss the experimental observation of this behavior, which is generic in an external trapping potential.
We consider the fate of $1/N$ expansions in unstable many-body quantum systems, as realized by a quench across criticality, and show the emergence of ${\rm e}^{2λt}/N$ as a renormalized parameter ruling the quantum-classical transition and accounting nonperturbatively for the local divergence rate $λ$ of mean-field solutions. In terms of ${\rm e}^{2λt}/N$, quasiclassical expansions of paradigmatic examples of criticality, like the self-trapping transition in an integrable Bose-Hubbard dimer and the generic instability of attractive bosonic systems toward soliton formation, are pushed to arbitr…
