Condensed Matter Physics Seminar

2 p.m., Thursday, May 12, 2005
Room 1201, Physics Building

Superfluid-Insulator transition of two species ultracold bosons in an optical lattice

Krishnendu Sengupta

(University of Toronto)

Abstract: We consider a realization of the two-species bosonic Hubbard model with variable interspecies interaction and hopping strength. We analyze the superfluid-insulator (SI) transition for the relevant parameter regimes and draw the ground state phase diagram for odd filling at commensurate densities. We find that in contrast to the even commensurate filling case, the superfluid-insulator transition occurs with (a) simultaneous setting in of superfluidity of both species or (b) coexistence of Mott insulating state of one species and superfluidity of the other or, in the case of unit filling, (c) complete depopulation of one species. The superfluid-insulator transition can be first order in a large region of the phase diagram. We develop a variational mean-field method which takes into account the effect of second order quantum fluctuations on the superfluid-insulator transition and corroborate the mean-field phase diagram using a quantum Monte Carlo study.

Host: Yakovenko
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