title: Superfluid-insulator transition in a moving system of interacting bosons.
abstract: We analyze the stability of superfluid currents in a system of strongly interacting ultracold atoms in an optical lattice. We show that such a system undergoes a dynamic, irreversible phase transition at a critical phase gradient that depends on the interaction strength between atoms. At commensurate filling, the phase boundary continuously interpolates between the classical modulation instability of a weakly interacting condensate and the equilibrium quantum phase transition into a Mott insulator state at which the critical current vanishes. We argue that quantum fluctuations smear the transition boundary in low dimensional systems. Finally we discuss the implications to realistic experiments.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA.
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Altman
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Polkovnikov
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Demler
authors.forename: B I
authors.initials: BI
authors.lastname: Halperin
authors.forename: M D
authors.initials: MD
authors.lastname: Lukin