Exact diagonalization of the Hamiltonian for trapped interacting bosons in lower dimensions

We consider systems of a small number of interacting bosons confined to harmonic potentials in one and two dimensions. By exact numerical diagonalization of the many-body Hamiltonian we determine the low-lying excitation energies and the ground-state energy and density profile. We discuss the dependence of these quantities on both interaction strength g and particle number N. The ground-state properties are compared to the predictions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, and the agreement is surprisingly good even for relatively low particle numbers. We also calculate the specific heat based on the obtained energy spectra.