  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.
