Bosonic molecules in a lattice: unusual fluid phase from multichannel interactions

We show that multichannel interactions significantly alter the phase diagram of ultracold bosonic molecules in an optical lattice. Most prominently, an unusual fluid region intervenes between the conventional superfluid and the Mott insulator. In it, number fluctuations remain but phase coherence is suppressed by a significant factor. This factor can be made arbitrarily large, at least in a two-site configuration. We calculate the phase diagram using complementary methods, including Gutzwiller mean-field and density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) calculations. Although we focus on bosonic molecules without dipolar interactions, we expect multichannel interactions to remain important for dipolar interacting and fermionic molecules.