Reduced density matrix approach to one-dimensional ultracold bosonic systems

The variational determination of the two-boson reduced density matrix is described for a one-dimensional system of N N harmonically trapped bosons interacting via contact interaction, where N N ranges from 2 2 to 10^4 10 4 . The ground-state energies are calculated, and compared to existing methods, including the analytic case (for N=2) N = 2 ) and mean-field approaches such as the one-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation and its variations. Structural properties such as the density and correlation functions are also derived, including the behaviour of the correlation function when boson coordinates coincide. This collectively demonstrates the capacity of the reduced density matrix method to accurately calculate collective ground-state properties of bosonic systems comprising few to many bosons, including the cross-over region between these extremes, across a large range of interaction strengths.