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arXiv:1909.09167 · Physical review. B./Physical review. B

Interplay of interactions and disorder at the superfluid-insulator transition: A dirty two-dimensional quantum critical point

Hart Goldman, Alex Thomson, Laimei Nie, Zhen Bi

Published Apr 23, 2020• 12 citations
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Abstract

We study the stability of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point of the quantum $\text{O}(2N)$ vector model to quenched disorder in the large-$N$ limit. While a random mass is strongly relevant at the Gaussian fixed point, its effect is screened by the strong interactions of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point. This enables a perturbative renormalization group study of the interplay of disorder and interactions about this fixed point. We show that, in contrast to the spiralling flows obtained in earlier double-$\ensuremath{\epsilon}$ expansions, the theory flows directly to a quantum critical point characterized by finite disorder and interactions. The critical exponents we obtain for this transition are in remarkable agreement with numerical studies of the superfluid-Mott glass transition. We additionally discuss the stability of this fixed point to scalar and vector potential disorder and use proposed boson-fermion dualities to make conjectures regarding the effects of weak disorder on dual Abelian Higgs and Chern-Simons-Dirac fermion theories when $N=1$.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.101.144506

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We study the stability of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point of the quantum O(2N)\text{O}(2N)O(2N) vector model to quenched disorder in the large-NNN limit. While a random mass is strongly relevant at the Gaussian fixed point, its effect is screened by the strong interactions of the Wilson-Fisher fixed point. This enables a perturbative renormalization group study of the interplay of disorder and interactions about this fixed point. We show that, in contrast to the spiralling flows obtained in earlier double-\ensuremathϵ\ensuremath{\epsilon}\ensuremathϵ expansions, the theory flows directly to a quantum critical point characterized by finite disorder and interactions. The critical exponents we obtain for this transition are in remarkable agreement with numerical studies of the superfluid-Mott glass transition. We additionally discuss the stability of this fixed point to scalar and vector potential disorder and use proposed boson-fermion dualities to make conjectures regarding the effects of weak disorder on dual Abelian Higgs and Chern-Simons-Dirac fermion theories when N=1N=1N=1.
We study the zero-temperature superfluid-insulator transition for a two-dimensional model of interacting, lattice bosons in the presence of quenched disorder and particle-hole symmetry. We follow the approach of a recent series of papers by Altman, Kafri, Polkovnikov, and Refael, in which the strong disorder renormalization group is used to study disordered bosons in one dimension. Adapting this method to two dimensions, we study several different species of disorder and uncover universal features of the superfluid-insulator transition. In particular, we locate an unstable finite disorder fixed point that governs the transition between the superfluid and a gapless, glassy insulator. We present numerical evidence that this glassy phase is the incompressible Mott glass and that the transition from this phase to the superfluid is driven by a percolation-type process. Finally, we provide estimates of the critical exponents governing this transition.
We use a large-N renormalization-group (RG) method to study a model of interacting boson system with a quenched random potential. In the absence of impurities, the pure boson system has a critical point that describes the superfluid--Mott-insulator (SF--MI) transition. The SF--MI transition of d-dimensional bosons belongs to the (d+1)-dimensional XY model universality class. In this paper, we study the dirty-boson critical points in the neighborhood of this pure SF--MI critical point. In general, the on-site random potential in the original lattice model gives two types of randomness in the effective-field-theoretic action. One is the randomness in the effective on-site repulsion w(x) and the other is the randomness of the chemical potential u(x). It turns out that d=2 is the critical dimension for both types of disorder but the roles of these two types of disorder are reversed as d=2 is crossed. Applying \ensuremath{\epsilon}=d-2 expansion, we found coupled RG equations for both kinds of randomness which reveal several nontrivial critical points. All the weak random fixed points we found have three or more relevant directions. We conclude that the direct SF--MI transition is unlikely to occur near two dimensions.
I study the zero-temperature phase transition between the superfluid and the insulating ground states of the Bose-Hubbard model in a random chemical potential and at large integer average number of particles per site. Duality transformation maps the pure Bose-Hubbard model onto the sine-Gordon theory in one dimension (1D), and onto the three dimensional Higgs electrodynamics in two dimensions (2D). In 1D the random chemical potential in the dual theory couples to the space derivative of the dual field, and appears as a random magnetic field along the imaginary time direction in 2D. I show that the transition from the superfluid state both in 1D and 2D is always controlled by the random critical point. This arises due to a coupling constant in the dual theory with replicas that becomes generated at large distances by the random chemical potential, and represents a relevant perturbation at the pure superfluid-Mott insulator fixed point. At large distances the dual theory in 1D becomes equivalent to Haldane's macroscopic representation of a disordered quantum fluid, where the generated term is identified with the random backscattering. In 2D the generated coupling corresponds to the random mass of the complex field that represents vortex loops. I calculate the critical exponents at the superfluid-Bose-glass fixed point in 2D to be $\ensuremath{\nu}=1.38$ and z=1.93z=1.93z=1.93, and the universal conductivity at the transition ${\ensuremath{\sigma}}_{c}{=0.25e}_{*}^{2}/h$, using the one-loop field-theoretic renormalization group in fixed dimension.
We use renormalization-group theory to examine the quantum phase transitions upon exiting the insulating phase of a disordered, strongly interacting boson system. For weak disorder we find a direct transition from this Mott insulator to the superfluid phase. In d>4d>4d>4 a finite region around the particle-hole symmetric point supports this direct transition, whereas for 2< d<42<~d<42< d<4 perturbative arguments suggest that the direct transition survives only precisely at commensurate filling. For strong disorder the renormalization trajectories pass next to two fixed points, describing a pair of distinct transitions; first from the Mott insulator to the Bose glass, and then from the Bose glass to the superfluid. The latter fixed point possesses statistical particle-hole symmetry and a dynamical exponent zzz, equal to the dimension ddd.
I argue that the system of interacting bosons at zero temperature and in random external potential possesses a simple critical point that describes the proliferation of disorder-induced defects in the superfluid ground state, and that is located at weak disorder close to and above one dimension. This makes it possible to address the critical behavior at the superfluid-Bose glass transition in dirty boson systems by expanding around the lower critical dimension of d=1.d=1.d=1. Within the formulated renormalization procedure near d=1,d=1,d=1, the dynamical critical exponent is obtained exactly and the correlation length critical exponent is calculated as a Laurent series in the parameter $\sqrt{\ensuremath{\epsilon}},$ with $\ensuremath{\epsilon}=d\ensuremath{-}1:$ z=d,z=d,z=d, $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/\sqrt{3\ensuremath{\epsilon}}+O(\sqrt{\ensuremath{\epsilon}})$ for the short-range, and z=1,z=1,z=1, $\ensuremath{\nu}=\sqrt{2/3\ensuremath{\epsilon}}+O(\sqrt{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}),$ for the long-range Coulomb interaction between bosons. The identified critical point should be stable against the residual perturbations in the effective action for the superfluid, at least in dimensions 1< d< 2,1<~d<~2,1< d< 2, for both short-range and Coulomb interactions. For the superfluid-Mott insulator transition in the system in a periodic potential and at a commensurate density of bosons, I find $\ensuremath{\nu}=(\frac{1}{2}\sqrt{\ensuremath{\epsilon}})+\frac{1}{4}+O(\sqrt{\ensuremath{\epsilon}}),$ which yields a result in reasonable agreement with the known XY\mathrm{XY}XY critical exponent in d=2.d=2.d=2. The critical behavior of the superfluid density, phonon velocity, and the compressibility in the system with short-range interactions is discussed.
Disorder and interactions both play crucial roles in quantum transport. Decades ago, Mott showed that electron-electron interactions can lead to insulating behavior in materials that conventional band theory predicts to be conducting. Soon thereafter, Anderson demonstrated that disorder can localize a quantum particle through the wave interference phenomenon of Anderson localization. Although interactions and disorder both separately induce insulating behavior, the interplay of these two ingredients is subtle and often leads to surprising behavior at the periphery of our current understanding. Modern experiments probe these phenomena in a variety of contexts (e.g. disordered superconductors, cold atoms, photonic waveguides, etc.); thus, theoretical and numerical advancements are urgently needed. In this thesis, we report progress on understanding two contexts in which the interplay of disorder and interactions is especially important. The first is the so-called “dirty” or random boson problem. In the past decade, a strong-disorder renormalization group (SDRG) treatment by Altman, Kafri, Polkovnikov, and Refael has raised the possibility of a new unstable fixed point governing the superfluid-insulator transition in the one-dimensional dirty boson problem. This new critical behavior may take over from the weak-disorder criticality of Giamarchi and Schulz when disorder is sufficiently strong. We analytically determine the scaling of the superfluid susceptibility at the strong-disorder fixed point and connect our analysis to recent Monte Carlo simulations by Hrahsheh and Vojta. We then shift our attention to two dimensions and use a numerical implementation of the SDRG to locate the fixed point governing the superfluid-insulator transition there. We identify several universal properties of this transition, which are fully independent of the microscopic features of the disorder. The second focus of this thesis is the interplay of localization and interactions in systems with high energy density (i.e., far from the usual low energy limit of condensed matter physics). Recent theoretical and numerical work indicates that localization can survive in this regime, provided that interactions are sufficiently weak. Stronger interactions can destroy localization, leading to a so-called many-body localization transition. This dynamical phase transition is relevant to questions of thermalization in isolated quantum systems: it separates a many-body localized phase, in which localization prevents transport and thermalization, from a conducting (“ergodic”) phase in which the usual assumptions of quantum statistical mechanics hold. Here, we present evidence that many-body localization also occurs in quasiperiodic systems that lack true disorder.