Possibility of a First-Order Superfluid–Mott-Insulator Transition of Spinor Bosons in an Optical Lattice
Possibility of a First-Order Superfluid–Mott-Insulator Transition of Spinor Bosons in an Optical Lattice
We study the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition of antiferromagnetic spin-1 bosons in an optical lattice described by a Bose-Hubbard model. Our variational study with the Gutzwiller variational wave function determines that the superfluid-Mott-insulator transition is a first-order one at a part of the phase boundary curve, contrary to the spinless case.