Spin effects in Bose-glass phases

We study the mechanism of formation of Bose glass (BG) phases in the spin-1 Bose Hubbard model when diagonal disorder is introduced. To this aim, we analyze first the phase diagram in the zero-hopping limit, there disorder induces superposition between Mott insulator (MI) phases with different filling numbers. Then BG appears as a compressible insulating phase (its compressibility marking the distinction with respect to a more common Mott insulator). The phase diagram for finite hopping is also calculated with the Gutzwiller approximation. The bosons' spin degrees of freedom introduce another scattering channel in the two-body interaction modifying the stability of MI regions with respect to the action of disorder. This leads to some peculiar phenomena such as the creation of BG of singlets, for very strong spin correlation, or the disappearance of BG phase in some particular cases where fluctuations are not able to mix different MI regions. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.