A strong-coupling expansion for the Green's functions, self-energies, and correlation functions of the Bose-Hubbard model is developed. We illustrate the general formalism, which includes all possible (normal-phase) inhomogeneous effects in the formalism, such as disorder or a trap potential, as well as effects of thermal excitations. The expansion is then employed to calculate the momentum distribution of the bosons in the Mott phase for an infinite homogeneous periodic system at zero temperature through third order in the hopping. By using scaling theory for the critical behavior at zero momentum and at the critical value of the hopping for the Mott insulator--to--superfluid transition along with a generalization of the random-phase-approximation-like form for the momentum distribution, we are able to extrapolate the series to infinite order and produce very accurate quantitative results for the momentum distribution in a simple functional form for one, two, and three dimensions. The accuracy is better in higher dimensions and is on the order of a few percent relative error everywhere except close to the critical value of the hopping divided by the on-site repulsion. In addition, we find simple phenomenological expressions for the Mott-phase lobes in two and three dimensions which are much more accurate than the truncated strong-coupling expansions and any other analytic approximation we are aware of. The strong-coupling expansions and scaling-theory results are benchmarked against numerically exact quantum Monte Carlo simulations in two and three dimensions and against density-matrix renormalization-group calculations in one dimension. These analytic expressions will be useful for quick comparison of experimental results to theory and in many cases can bypass the need for expensive numerical simulations.
We develop two methods to calculate the momentum distribution of the insulating (Mott and charge-density-wave) phases of the extended Bose-Hubbard model with on-site and nearest-neighbor boson-boson repulsions on
d-dimensional hypercubic lattices. First, we construct the random-phase approximation result, which corresponds to the exact solution for the infinite-dimensional limit. Then, we perform a power-series expansion in the hopping
t via strong-coupling perturbation theory, to evaluate the momentum distribution in two and three dimensions; we also use the strong-coupling theory to verify the random-phase approximation solution in infinite dimensions. Finally, we briefly discuss possible implications of our results in the context of ultracold dipolar Bose gases with dipole-dipole interactions loaded into optical lattices.
We study the effects of an artificial gauge field on the ground-state phases of the Bose-Hubbard model on a checkerboard superlattice in two dimensions, including the superfluid phase and the Mott and alternating Mott insulators. First, we discuss the single-particle Hofstadter problem, and show that the presence of a checkerboard superlattice gives rise to a magnetic flux-independent energy gap in the excitation spectrum. Then, we consider the many-particle problem, and derive an analytical mean-field expression for the superfluid-Mott and superfluid--alternating-Mott insulator phase transition boundaries. Finally, since the phase diagram of the Bose-Hubbard model on a checkerboard superlattice is in many ways similar to that of the extended Bose-Hubbard model, we comment on the effects of magnetic field on the latter model, and derive an analytical mean-field expression for the superfluid-insulator phase transition boundaries as well.
We present a strong-coupling expansion of the Bose-Hubbard model which describes both the superfluid and the Mott phases of ultracold bosonic atoms in an optical lattice. By performing two successive Hubbard-Stratonovich transformations of the intersite hopping term, we derive an effective action which provides a suitable starting point to study the strong-coupling limit of the Bose-Hubbard model. This action can be analyzed by taking into account Gaussian fluctuations about the mean-field approximation as in the Bogoliubov theory of the weakly interacting Bose gas. In the Mott phase, we reproduce results of previous mean-field theories and also calculate the momentum distribution function. In the superfluid phase, we find a gapless spectrum and compare our results with the Bogoliubov theory.
We present a strong-coupling expansion of the Bose-Hubbard model based on a mean-field treatment of the hopping term, while onsite fluctuations are taken into account exactly. This random phase approximation describes the universal features of the generic Mott-insulator--superfluid transition (induced by a density change) and the superfluid state near the phase transition. The critical quasiparticles at the quantum critical point have a quadratic dispersion with an effective mass
m∗ and their mutual interaction is described by an effective
s-wave scattering length
a∗. The singular part of the pressure takes the same form as in a dilute Bose gas, provided we replace the boson mass
m and the scattering length in vacuum
a by
m∗ and
a∗, and the density
n by the excess density $|n\ensuremath{-}{n}_{\mathrm{MI}}|$ of particles (or holes) with respect to the Mott insulator. We define a universal two-body contact
Cuniv that controls the high-momentum tail $\ensuremath{\sim}1/{|\mathbf{k}|}^{4}$ of the singular part
nksing of the momentum distribution. We also apply the strong-coupling RPA to a lattice model of hard-core bosons and find that the high-momentum distribution is controlled by a universal contact, in complete agreement with the Bose-Hubbard model. Finally, we discuss a continuum model of bosons in an optical lattice and define two additional two-body contacts: a short-distance universal contact
Cunivsd which controls the high-momentum tail of
nksing at scales larger than the inverse lattice spacing, and a full contact
C, which controls the high-momentum tail of the full-momentum distribution
nk.
We report results from a systematic analytic strong-coupling expansion of the Bose-Hubbard model in one- and two-spatial dimensions. We obtain numerically exact results for the dispersion of single-particle and single-hole excitations in the Mott insulator. The boundary of the Mott phase can be determined with previously unattainable accuracy in one and two dimensions. In one dimension, we observe the occurrence of reentrant behavior from the compressible to the insulating phase in a region close to the critical point, which was conjectured in earlier work. Our calculation can be used as a benchmark for the development of numerical techniques for strongly correlated systems.