arXiv:1506.05609 · Physical Review A
Beyond the Hubbard bands in strongly correlated lattice bosons
Hugo U. R. Strand, Martin Eckstein, Philipp Werner
Abstract
We investigate features in the single-particle spectral function beyond the Hubbard bands in the strongly correlated normal phase of the Bose-Hubbard model. There are two distinct classes of additional peaks generated by the bosonic statistics. The first type is thermally activated Hubbard ``sidebands'', with the same physical origin as the zero-temperature Hubbard bands, but generated by excitations from thermally activated local occupation number states. The second class are two-particle fluctuation resonances driven by the lattice dynamics. In the unity filling Mott insulator, this takes the form of a localized triplon combined with a dispersing holon. Both types of resonances also manifest themselves in the structure factor and the interaction modulation spectra obtained from nonequilibrium bosonic dynamical mean-field theory calculations. Our findings explain experimental lattice modulation and Bragg spectroscopy results, and they predict a strong temperature dependence of the first sideband, thereby opening the door to precise thermometry of strongly correlated lattice bosons.