Universal Conductivity in the Two dimensional Boson Hubbard Model

Abstract

We use Quantum Monte Carlo to evaluate the conductivity $\sigma$ of the 2--dimensional disordered boson Hubbard model at the superfluid-bose glass phase boundary. At the critical point for particle density $\rho=0.5$, we find $\sigma_{c}=(0.45 \pm 0.07) \sigma_{Q}$, where $\sigma_{Q}= e_{*}^{2} / h$ from a finite size scaling analysis of the superfluid density. We obtain $\sigma_{c}=(0.47 \pm 0.08) \sigma_{Q}$ from a direct calculation of the current--current correlation function. Simulations at the critical points for other particle densities, $\rho=0.75$ and $1.0$, give similar values for $\sigma$. We discuss possible origins of the difference in this value from that recently obtained by other numerical approaches.