Many-body density and coherence of trapped cold bosons

Abstract

Many-body densities and correlation functions are of paramount importance for understanding quantum many-body physics. Here, we present a method to compute them; our approach is general and based on the action of bosonic or fermionic annihilation field operators on the many-body wavefunction. We analyze $N = 6$ quasi-one-dimensional harmonically-trapped bosons with weak to strong contact interaction strength up to the Tonks-Girardeau limit with infinite repulsion using the MultiConfigurational Time-Dependent Hartree method for indistinguishable particles (MCTDH-X). We compare our MCTDH-X solutions to the analytical ones in the infinite repulsion regime as well as to the so-called correlated pair wavefunction approach and find a good agreement. Since numerical approximations are not bound to the cases where analytical solutions are known, we thus demonstrate a general method to investigate high-order reduced density matrices and correlation functions in systems for which analytical solutions are unknown. We trace the build-up of correlation features in the crossover from weak interactions to the Tonks-Girardeau limit and find that the higher-order correlation functions and densities resemble those in the Tonks-Girardeau limit for way smaller interactions than anticipated from just the one-body density.