Absence of a Direct Superfluid to Mott Insulator Transition in Disordered Bose Systems

Journal Article · Fri Oct 02 04:00:00 EDT 2009 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.103.140402· OSTI ID:21370706

Pollet, L ^[1]; Prokof'ev, N V; Svistunov, B V ^[1]; Troyer, M ^[2]

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1. Department of Physics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003 (United States)
2. Theoretische Physik, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich (Switzerland)

We prove the absence of a direct quantum phase transition between a superfluid and a Mott insulator in a bosonic system with generic, bounded disorder. We also prove the compressibility of the system on the superfluid-insulator critical line and in its neighborhood. These conclusions follow from a general theorem of inclusions, which states that for any transition in a disordered system, one can always find rare regions of the competing phase on either side of the transition line. Quantum Monte Carlo simulations for the disordered Bose-Hubbard model show an even stronger result, important for the nature of the Mott insulator to Bose glass phase transition: the critical disorder bound DELTA{sub c} corresponding to the onset of disorder-induced superfluidity, satisfies the relation DELTA{sub c}>E{sub g/2}, with E{sub g/2} the half-width of the Mott gap in the pure system.

• OSTI ID: 21370706
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 14 Vol. 103; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CALCULATION METHODS
COMPRESSIBILITY
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CRYSTAL MODELS
HUBBARD MODEL
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MECHANICAL PROPERTIES
MECHANICS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
QUANTUM MECHANICS
SIMULATION
SUPERFLUIDITY