We report on a phenomenological study of superfluid to Mott insulator transitions of bosons on the triangular lattice, focusing primarily on the interplay between Mott localization and geometrical charge frustration at
1∕2-filling. A general dual-vortex field theory is developed for arbitrary rational filling factors
f, based on the appropriate projective symmetry group. At the simple nonfrustrated density
f=1∕3, we uncover an example of a deconfined quantum critical point very similar to that found on the half-filled square lattice. Turning to
f=1∕2, the behavior is quite different. Here, we find that the low-energy action describing the Mott transition has an emergent non-Abelian $SU(2)\ifmmode\times\else\texttimes\fi{}U(1)$ symmetry, which is not present at the microscopic level. This large non-Abelian symmetry is directly related to the frustration-induced quasidegeneracy between many charge-ordered states not related by microscopic symmetries. Through this ``pseudospin''
SU(2) symmetry, the charged excitations in the insulator close to the Mott transition develop a Skyrmion-like character. This leads to an understanding of the supersolid phase of the triangular lattice
XXZ model as a ``partially melted'' Mott insulator, for more information see Melko et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 127207 (2005)], Heidarian and Damle [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 127206 (2005)], and Wessel and Troyer [Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 127205 (2005)]. The latter picture naturally explains a number of puzzling numerical observations of the properties of this supersolid. Moreover, we predict that the nearby quantum phase transition from this supersolid to the Mott insulator is in the noncompact
CP1 critical universality class as presented in Motrunich and Vishwanath [Phys. Rev. B. 70, 075104 (2004)]. A description of a broad range of other Mott and supersolid states, and a diverse set of quantum critical points between them, is also provided.
Motivated by experiments on Josephson junction arrays, and cold atoms in an optical lattice in a synthetic magnetic field, we study the ``fully frustrated'' Bose-Hubbard model with half a magnetic flux quantum per plaquette. We obtain the phase diagram of this model on a two-leg ladder at integer filling via the density matrix renormalization group approach, complemented by Monte Carlo simulations on an effective classical
XY model. The ground state at intermediate correlations is consistently shown to be a chiral Mott insulator (CMI) with a gap to all excitations and staggered loop currents which spontaneously break time-reversal symmetry. We characterize the CMI state as a vortex supersolid or an indirect exciton condensate, and discuss various experimental implications.
Rotational states for trapped bosons in an optical lattice are studied in the framework of the Hubbard model. Critical frequencies are calculated and the main parameter regimes are identified. Transitions are observed from edge superfluids to vortex lattices with Mott insulating cores, and subsequently to lattices of interstitial vortices. The former transition coincides with the Mott transition. Changes in symmetry of the vortex lattices are observed as a function of lattice depth. Predictions for experimental signatures are presented.
We consider effects of artificial magnetic fields on the ground state of the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model. Using an asymmetric Bose-Hubbard model, we demonstrate that the frustrating hopping energy localizes bosons and enlarges insulators and supersolid borders. We show these increments in the presence of artificial gauge fields up to a symmetric point of the field. Moreover, our calculations exhibit the real space modulations of the superfluid and supersolid phases. The bosonic current exhibits vortices in these phases, which their configurations depend on the commensuration between the magnetic field and the lattice. Although the magnetic field breaks the translational symmetry of the square lattice explicitly, this symmetry is restored in the Mott insulator phase. The filling factor exhibits a checkerboard pattern in the density-wave and supersolid phases, regardless of the magnetic field strength. We explore thermal fluctuations and demonstrate the robustness of insulators and SS phases up to temperatures comparable to the interaction energy, which support the feasibility of observing such phases in experiments.
The Properties of the Mott insulator to superfluid phase transition are obtained through the fermionic approximation in the Jaynes-Cummings-Hubbard model on linear, square, SC, FCC, and BCC Bravais lattices. For varying excitation number and atom-cavity frequency detuning. We find that the Mott lobes and the critical hopping are not scalable only for the FCC lattice. At the large excitation number regime, the critical hopping is scalable for all the lattices and it does not depend on the detuning.
We study the Mott-insulator–superfluid transition of ultracold bosonic atoms in a two-dimensional square optical lattice in the presence of a synthetic magnetic field with p / q ( p and q being co-prime integers) flux quanta passing through each lattice plaquette. We show that on approach to the transition from the Mott side, the momentum distribution of the bosons exhibits q precursor peaks within the first magnetic Brillouin zone. We also provide an effective theory for the transition and show that it involves q interacting boson fields. We construct, from a mean-field analysis of this effective theory, the superfluid ground states near the transition and compute, for q =2, 3, both the gapped and the gapless collective modes of these states. We suggest experiments to test our theory.