Ultracold bosons in one-dimensional harmonic and multi-well traps: a Quantum Monte Carlo vs a correlated pair approach

Abstract

We study the crossover of a finite one-dimensional (1D) bosonic ensemble from weak to strong interactions in harmonic traps and multi-well potentials. Although these systems are very common in experimental setups and have been studied theoretically, an analytical description is lacking. We perform Diffusion Quantum Monte Carlo calculations which we show to be in good agreement with results from analytical functions that we construct to describe these systems. For the harmonic trap we use the correlated-pair wave function which we introduced in [1] considering here much larger atom numbers, going beyond the few-body ensembles studied in \cite{brouzos}. We also investigate double and triple wells, changing correspondingly the uncorrelated part of the Ansatz to describe efficiently the single-particle behaviour. On-site effects beyond mean-field and standard Bose-Hubbard calculations that appear in densities being captured by our analytical functions are explored.