We investigate the superfluid (SF) to Bose-glass (BG) quantum phase transition using extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations of two-dimensional hard-core bosons in a random box potential. T=0 critical properties are studied by thorough finite-size scaling of condensate and SF densities, both vanishing at the same critical disorder Wc=4.80(5). Our results give the following estimates for the critical exponents: z=1.85(15), ν=1.20(12), η=-0.40(15). Furthermore, the probability distribution of the SF response P(lnρSF) displays striking differences across the transition: while it narrows with increasing system sizes L in the SF phase, it broadens in the BG regime, indicating an absence of self-averaging, and at the critical point P(lnρSF+zlnL) is scale invariant. Finally, high-precision measurements of the local density rule out a percolation picture for the SF-BG transition.

A spin-wave approach of the zero temperature superfluid-insulator transition for two-dimensional hard-core bosons in a random potential μ=±W is developed. While at the classical level there is no intervening phase between the Bose-condensed superfluid (SF) and the gapped disordered insulator, the introduction of quantum fluctuations leads to a much richer physics. Upon increasing the disorder strength W, the Bose-condensed fraction disappears first, before the SF. Then a gapless Bose-glass phase emerges over a finite region until the insulator appears. Furthermore, in the strongly disordered SF regime, a mobility edge in the spin-wave excitation spectrum is found at a finite frequency Ω(c) decreasing with W, and presumably vanishing in the Bose-glass phase.