Universal Properties of the Higgs Resonance in (2+1)-Dimensional U(1) Critical Systems

Kun Chen, Longxiang Liu, Youjin Deng, Lode Pollet, Nikolay Prokof'ev

Published 2013-01-14, updated 2013-04-24Version 2

We present spectral functions for the magnitude squared of the order parameter in the scaling limit of the two-dimensional superfluid to Mott insulator quantum phase transition at constant density, which has emergent particle-hole symmetry and Lorentz invariance. The universal functions for the superfluid, Mott insulator, and normal liquid phases reveal a low-frequency resonance which is relatively sharp and is followed by a damped oscillation (in the first two phases only) before saturating to the quantum critical plateau. The counterintuitive resonance feature in the insulating and normal phases calls for deeper understanding of collective modes in the strongly coupled (2+1)-dimensional relativistic field theory. Our results are derived from analytically continued correlation functions obtained from path-integral Monte Carlo simulations of the Bose-Hubbard model.