We study the transition from a Mott insulator to a superfluid in both the two- and the three-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model at zero temperature, employing the method of the effective potential. Converting Kato's perturbation series into an algorithm capable of reaching high orders, we obtain accurate critical parameters for any integer filling factor. Our technique allows us to monitor both the approach to the mean-field limit by considering spatial dimensionalities $d > 3$, and to the quantum rotor limit of high filling, which refers to an array of Josephson junctions.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

We investigate the localization properties of single-particle eigenstates in bichromatic one-dimensional optical lattices. Whereas such a lattice with a sufficiently deep primary component and a suitably adjusted incommensurate secondary component provides an approximate realization of the Harper model, the system's self-duality is broken when the lattice is comparatively shallow. As a consequence, the sharp metal-insulator transition exhibited by Harper's model is replaced by a sequence of mobility edges in realistic bichromatic optical lattices that do not reach the tight-binding regime.

We carry out a perturbative analysis, of high order in the tunneling parameter, of the ground state of the homogeneous Bose-Hubbard model in the Mott insulator phase. This is made possible by a diagrammatic process chain approach, derived from Kato's representation of the many-body perturbation series, which can be implemented numerically in a straightforward manner. We compute ground-state energies, atom-atom correlation functions, density-density correlations, and occupation number fluctuations, for one-, two-, and three-dimensional lattices with arbitrary integer filling. A phenomenological scaling behavior is found which renders the data almost independent of the filling factor. In addition, the process chain approach is employed for calculating the boundary between the Mott insulator phase and the superfluid phase with high accuracy. We also consider systems with dimensionalities d > 3, thus monitoring the approach to the mean-field limit. The versatility of the method suggests further applications to other systems which are less well understood.

PACS 03.75.Lm -Tunneling, Josephson effect, Bose-Einstein condensates in periodic potentials PACS 64.70.Tg -Quantum phase transitions PACS 67.85.Hj -Bose-Einstein condensates in optical potentialsAbstract. -We investigate systems of bosonic particles at zero temperature in triangular and hexagonal optical lattice potentials in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Employing the process-chain approach, we obtain accurate values for the boundaries between the Mott insulating phase and the superfluid phase. These results can serve as reference data for both other approximation schemes and upcoming experiments. Since arbitrary integer filling factors g are amenable to our technique, we are able to monitor the behavior of the critical hopping parameters with increasing filling. We also demonstrate that the g-dependence of these exact parameters is described almost perfectly by a scaling relation inferred from the mean-field approximation.

We develop a strategy for calculating critical exponents for the Mott insulator-to-superfluid transition shown by the Bose-Hubbard model. Our approach is based on the field-theoretic concept of the effective potential, which provides a natural extension of the Landau theory of phase transitions to quantum critical phenomena. The coefficients of the Landau expansion of that effective potential are obtained by high-order perturbation theory. We counteract the divergency of the weak-coupling perturbation series by including the seldom considered Landau coefficient a6 into our analysis. Our preliminary results indicate that the critical exponents for both the condensate density and the superfluid density, as derived from the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model, deviate by less than 1% from the best known estimates computed so far for the three-dimensional XY universality class.