Quantum Dynamics of Disordered Bosons in an Optical Lattice

TL;DR

This paper investigates the equilibrium phases and non-equilibrium dynamics of disordered strongly interacting bosons in an optical lattice, revealing how disorder influences excitation creation and system relaxation under periodic driving.

Contribution

It introduces a Gutzwiller variational approach to map the phase diagram and analyze non-equilibrium responses in disordered Bose-Hubbard systems, highlighting disorder effects on excitation decay and relaxation.

Findings

Disordered system shows exponential decay of excitation density with ramp time.

Energy and order parameter decrease as inverse powers of ramp time in clean systems.

Disorder increases decay rate of excitations, leading to an asymptotic excitation density.

Abstract

We study the equilibrium and non-equilibrium properties of strongly interacting bosons on a lattice in presence of a random bounded disorder potential. Using a Gutzwiller projected variational technique, we study the equilibrium phase diagram of the disordered Bose Hubbard model and obtain the Mott insulator, Bose glass and superfluid phases. We also study the non equilibrium response of the system under a periodic temporal drive where, starting from the superfluid phase, the hopping parameter is ramped down linearly in time, and back to its initial value. We study the density of excitations created, the change in the superfluid order parameter and the energy pumped into the system in this process as a function of the inverse ramp rate $\tau$. For the clean case the density of excitations goes to a constant, while the order parameter and energy relaxes as $1/\tau$ and $1/\tau^2$ respectively. With disorder, the excitation density decays exponentially with $\tau$, with the decay rate increasing with the disorder, to an asymptotic value independent of the disorder. The energy and change in order parameter also decrease as $\tau$ is increased.