Superfluid to Mott-insulator transition in an anizotropic two--dimensional optical lattice

We study the superfluid to Mott-insulator transition of bosons in an optical anizotropic lattice by employing the Bose-Hubbard model living on a two-dimensional lattice with anizotropy parameter $\kappa$. The compressible superfluid state and incompressible Mott-insulator (MI) lobes are efficiently described analytically, using the quantum U(1) rotor approach. The ground state phase diagram showing the evolution of the MI lobes is quantified for arbitrary values of $\kappa$, corresponding to various kind of lattices: from square, through rectangular to almost one-dimensional.