Interacting bosons in an optical lattice

A strongly interacting Bose gas in an optical lattice is studied using a hard‐core interaction. Two different approaches are introduced, one is based on a spin‐1/2 Fermi gas with attractive interaction, the other one on a functional integral with an additional constraint (slave‐boson approach). The relation between fermions and hard‐core bosons is briefly discussed for the case of a one‐dimensional Bose gas. For a three‐dimensional gas we identify the order parameter of the Bose‐Einstein condensate through a Hubbard‐Stratonovich transformation and treat the corresponding theories within a mean‐field approximation and with Gaussian fluctuations. This allows us to evaluate the phase diagram, including the Bose‐Einstein condensate and the Mott insulator, the density‐density correlation function, the static structure factor, and the quasiparticle excitation spectrum. The role of quantum and thermal fluctuations are studied in detail for both approaches, where we find good agreement with the Gross‐Pitaevskii equation and with the Bogoliubov approach in the dilute regime. In the dense regime, which is characterized by the phase transition between the Bose‐Einstein condensate and the Mott insulator, we discuss a renormalized Gross‐Pitaevskii equation. This equation can describe the macroscopic wave function of the Bose‐Einstein condensate in the dilute regime as well as close to the transition to the Mott insulator. Finally, we compare the results of the attractive spin‐1/2 Fermi gas and those of the slave‐boson approach and find good agreement for all physical quantities.