Superfluid-insulator transition in a moving system of interacting bosons

Abstract

We analyze stability of superfluid currents in a system of strongly interacting ultra-cold atoms in an optical lattice. We show that such a system undergoes a dynamic, irreversible phase transition at a critical phase gradient that depends on the interaction strength between atoms. At commensurate filling, the phase boundary continuously interpolates between the classical modulation instability of a weakly interacting condensate and the equilibrium quantum phase transition into a Mott insulator state at which the critical current vanishes. We argue that quantum fluctuations smear the transition boundary in low dimensional systems. Finally we discuss the implications to realistic experiments.