Weak- versus strong-disorder superfluid—Bose glass transition in one dimension

Abstract

Using large-scale simulations based on matrix product state and quantum Monte Carlo techniques, we study the superfluid to Bose glass-transition for one-dimensional attractive hard-core bosons at zero temperature, across the full regime from weak to strong disorder. As a function of interaction and disorder strength, we identify a Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless critical line with two different regimes. At small attraction where critical disorder is weak compared to the bandwidth, the critical Luttinger parameter $K_c$ takes its universal Giamarchi-Schulz value $K_{c}=3/2$. Conversely, a non-universal $K_c>3/2$ emerges for stronger attraction where weak-link physics is relevant. In this strong disorder regime, the transition is characterized by self-similar power-law distributed weak links with a continuously varying characteristic exponent $\alpha$.