Quantum critical behavior of ultracold bosons in the two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard lattice*

We investigate the temperature-dependent behavior emerging in the vicinity of the superfluid (SF) to Mott insulator (MI) transition of interacting bosons in a two-dimensional optical lattice, described by the Bose-Hubbard model. The equilibrium phase diagram at finite temperatures is computed by means of the cluster mean-field theory (CMF) where the effect of non-local correlations is analyzed systematically by finite-size scaling of the clusters. The phase diagram exhibits a transition and a crossover of the SF and MI phases, respectively, to a normal fluid (NF) state at finite temperature. In order to characterize these phases, and the NF transition and crossover scales, we calculate, in addition to the condensate amplitude, the superfluid fraction, sound velocity and compressibility. The phase boundaries obtained by CMF with finite-size scaling agree quantitatively with quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) results, as well with experiments. The von Neumann entanglement entropy within a cluster exhibits critical enhancement near the SF-MI quantum critical point (QCP) and at the SF-NF boundary. We also discuss the behavior of the transition lines near this QCP at the particle-hole symmetric point located at the tip of a Mott lobe as well as away from particle-hole symmetry.