Dynamic structure factor of a driven-dissipative Bose–Hubbard model

Abstract Dynamic structure factor (DSF) is important for understanding excitations in many-body physics; it reveals information about the spectral and spatial correlations of fluctuations in quantum systems. Collective phenomena like quantum phase transitions of ultracold atoms are addressed by harnessing density fluctuations. Here, we calculate the DSF of a nonequilibrium spinless Bose–Hubbard model from the perspective of dissipative phase transition (DPT) in a steady state. Our methodology uses a homogeneous mean-field approximation to make the single-site hierarchy simpler and applies the Lindbladian perturbation method (LPM) to go beyond the single site, limited by the ratio of the inter-site hopping term to the Liouvillian gap as a small parameter. Our results show that the DSF near a DPT point is characteristically different from that away from the transition point, providing a clear density spectral signature of the DPT. In addition to comparing the two numerical frameworks, the mean-field results serve as a benchmark for proof-of-principle robustness of LPM. Despite the numerical difficulty, our methodology provides a computationally accessible route for studying density fluctuations in an open lattice quantum system without requiring large-scale computation.