Slave-particle approach to the finite-temperature properties of ultracold Bose gases in optical lattices

Abstract

By using slave particle (slave boson and slave fermion) technique on the Bose-Hubbard model, we study the finite temperature properties of ultracold Bose gases in optical lattices. The phase diagrams at finite temperature are depicted by including different types of slave particles and the effect of the finite types of slave particles is estimated. The superfluid density is evaluated using the Landau second order phase transition theory. The atom density, excitation spectrum and dispersion curve are also computed at various temperatures, and how the Mott-insulator evolves as the temperature increases is demonstrated. For most quantities to be calculated, we find that there are no qualitatively differences in using the slave boson or the slave fermion approaches. However, when studying the stability of the mean field state, we find that in contrast to the slave fermion approach, the slave boson mean field state is not stable. Although the slave boson mean field theory gives a qualitatively correct phase boundary, it corresponds to a local maximum of Landau free energy and can not describe the second order phase transition because the coefficient $a_4$ of the fourth order term is always negative in the free energy expansion.