Department of Physics
Condensed Matter Seminar

The superfluid-insulator transition of bosons has constantly attracted much attention - it describes the physics of Cooper pairs in films and nanowires, as well as Helium and other bosonic atoms. Little is known, however, about this phase transition in the presence of strong disorder. In my talk I will present recent progress in the study of strongly disordered one-dimensional Bosonic chains. Using real-space renormalization group, we analyzed the U(1) rotor model with randomness in hopping, charging, and chemical potential, and found the universal low energy properties of the insulating phases in the system. The real-space RG also allows a discussion of the nature and universality of the critical point at large disorder, which we compare to what is known about the superfluid-insulator transition in weakly-disordered bosonic chains.