Mott insulators in an optical lattice with high filling factors

We discuss the superfluid to Mott insulator transition of an atomic Bose gas in an optical lattice with high filling factors. We show that in this multiband situation, the long-wavelength physics is described by a single-band Bose-Hubbard model. We determine the many-body renormalization of the tunneling and interaction parameters in the effective Bose-Hubbard Hamiltonian, and consider the resulting model at nonzero temperatures. We show that, in particular, for a one- or two-dimensional optical lattice, the Mott-insulator phase is more difficult to realize than anticipated previously.