Bose Hubbard model in the presence of Ohmic dissipation

Abstract

We study the zero temperature mean-field phase diagram of the Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of local coupling between the bosons and an external bath. We consider a coupling that conserves the on-site occupation number, preserving the robustness of the Mott and superfluid phases. We show that the coupling to the bath renormalizes the chemical potential and the interaction between the bosons and reduces the size of the superfluid regions between the insulating lobes. For strong enough coupling, a finite value of hopping is required to obtain superfluidity around the degeneracy points where Mott phases with different occupation numbers coexist. We discuss the role that such a bath coupling may play in experiments that probe the formation of the insulator-superfluid shell structure in systems of trapped atoms.