Interacting Bose gases in twisted-bilayer optical lattices

Abstract

Recent experiments have realized ultra-cold gases in twisted-bilayer optical lattices. We show that interacting bosons in these lattices present a highly non-trivial ground-state physics resulting from the interplay between inter- and intra-layer hopping and interactions. This physics is crucially determined by site clusterization, which we properly take into account by developing a specifically-tailored cluster Gutzwiller approach. Clusterization results in a large variety of different Mott-like phases characterized by typically different occupations of the clusters, and in the appearance of pockets of sites in between which particles can freely move, but which remain disconnected from each other. This peculiar phase, which resembles the well-known Bose glass phase, may occur even for commensurate twist angles and is further enhanced when the twisting is incommensurate. Moreover, in the incommensurate case, the formation of mobility islands may occur even without inter-layer hopping solely due to inter-layer interactions.