Ground-state properties of a Tonks-Girardeau gas in a split trap

Abstract

We determine the exact many-body properties of a bosonic Tonks-Girardeau gas confined in a harmonic potential with a tunable $\ensuremath{\delta}$-function barrier at the trap center. This is done by calculating the reduced single-particle density matrix, the pair-distribution function, and the momentum distribution of the gas as a function of barrier strength and particle number. With increasing barrier height we find that the ground-state occupation in a diagonal basis diverges from the $\sqrt{N}$ behavior that is expected for the case of a simple harmonic trap. In fact, the scaling of the occupation number depends on whether one has an even or odd number of particles. Since this quantity is a measure of the coherence of our sample we show how the odd-even effect manifests itself in both the momentum distribution of the Bose gas and interference fringe visibility during free temporal evolution.