Minimal Model for Disorder-induced Missing Moment of Inertia in Solid $^4$He

TL;DR

This paper models disorder-induced superfluidity in solid $^4$He using a disordered Bose-Hubbard framework, explaining experimental observations of missing moment of inertia and impurity effects.

Contribution

It introduces a minimal disordered Bose-Hubbard model for solid $^4$He, linking disorder effects to superfluidity and explaining experimental phenomena.

Findings

Disorder can induce a transition from Mott insulator to superfluid in solid $^4$He.

The critical disorder level depends on boson filling, interactions, and lattice parameters.

Quantitative agreement with experimental trends on $^3$He impurity effects.

Abstract

The absence of a missing moment inertia in clean solid $^4$He suggests that the minimal experimentally relevant model is one in which disorder induces superfluidity in a bosonic lattice. To this end, we explore the relevance of the disordered Bose-Hubbard model in this context. We posit that a clean array $^4$He atoms is a self-generated Mott insulator, that is, the $^4$He atoms constitute the lattice as well as the `charge carriers'. With this assumption, we are able to interpret the textbook defect-driven supersolids as excitations of either the lower or upper Hubbard bands. In the experiments at hand, disorder induces a closing of the Mott gap through the generation of mid-gap localized states at the chemical potential. Depending on the magnitude of the disorder, we find that the destruction of the Mott state takes place for $d+z>4$ either through a Bose glass phase (strong disorder) or through a direct transition to a superfluid (weak disorder). For $d+z<4$, disorder is always relevant. The critical value of the disorder that separates these two regimes is shown to be a function of the boson filling, interaction and the momentum cut off. We apply our work to the experimentally observed enhancement $^3$He impurities has on the onset temperature for the missing moment of inertia. We find quantitative agreement with experimental trends.