Ground state properties of trapped boson system with finite-range Gaussian repulsion: exact diagonalization study

We use exact diagonalization to study an interacting system of N spinless bosons with finite-range Gaussian repulsion, confined in a quasi-two-dimensional harmonic trap with and without an introduced rotation. The diagonalization of the Hamiltonian matrix using Davidson algorithm in subspaces of quantized total angular momentum L _z is carried out to obtain the N-body lowest eigenenergy and eigenstate. To bring out the effect of quantum (Bose) statistics and consequent phase stiffness (rigidity) of the variationally obtained many-body wavefunction on various physical quantities, our study spans from few-body (N = 2) to many-body (N = 16) systems. Further, to examine the finite-range effect of the repulsive Gaussian potential on many-body ground state properties of the Bose-condensate, we obtain the lowest eigenstate, the critical angular velocity of single vortex state and the quantum correlation (measured) in terms of von Neumann entanglement entropy and degree of condensation. It is found that for small values of the range (measured by the parameter σ) of Gaussian potential, the ground state energy increases for few-boson (2 ⩽ N ⩽ 8) systems but decreases for many-boson (N > 8) systems. On the other hand for relatively large values of the range of Gaussian potential, the ground state energy exhibits a monotonic decrease, regardless of the number of bosons N. For a given N, there is found an optimal value of the range of Gaussian potential for which the first vortex (with L _z = N) nucleates at a lower value of the rotational angular velocity Ω_c1 compared to the zero-range (δ-function) potential. Further, we observe that the inter-particle interaction and the introduced rotation are competing effects with latter being dominant over the former. With increase in the range of Gaussian potential, the value of von Neumann entropy decreases and the degree of condensation increases implying an enhanced quantum correlation and phase rigidity. (paper)