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Quantum critical behavior and trap-size scaling of trapped bosons in a one-dimensional optical lattice

We study the quantum (zero-temperature) critical behaviors of confined particle systems described by the one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Hubbard model in the presence of a confining potential, at the Mott insulator to superfluid transitions, and within the gapless superfluid phase. Specifically, we consider the hard-core limit of the model, which allows us to study the effects of the confining potential by exact and very accurate numerical results. We analyze the quantum critical behaviors in the large trap-size limit within the framework of the trap-size scaling (TSS) theory, which introduces a new trap exponent theta to describe the dependence on the trap size. This study is relevant for experiments of confined quasi 1D cold atom systems in optical lattices. At the low-density Mott transition TSS can be shown analytically within the spinless fermion representation of the hard-core limit. The trap-size dependence turns out to be more subtle in the other critical regions, when the corresponding homogeneous system has a nonzero filling f, showing an infinite number of level crossings of the lowest states when increasing the trap size. At the n=1 Mott transition this gives rise to a modulated TSS: the TSS is still controlled by the trap-size exponent theta, but it gets modulated by periodic functions of the trap size. Modulations of the asymptotic power-law behavior is also found in the gapless superfluid region, with additional multiscaling behaviors.