  In the absence of a confining potential, the boson Hubbard model in its
ground state is known to exhibit a superfluid to Mott insulator quantum phase
transition at commensurate fillings and strong on-site repulsion. In this
paper, we use quantum Monte Carlo simulations to study the ground state of the
one dimensional bosonic Hubbard model in a trap. We show that some, but not
all, aspects of the Mott insulating phase persist when a confining potential is
present. The Mott behavior is present for a continuous range of incommensurate
fillings, a very different situation from the unconfined case. Furthermore the
establishment of the Mott phase does not proceed via a quantum phase transition
in the traditional sense. These observations have important implications for
the interpretation of experimental results for atoms trapped on optical
lattices. Initial results show that, qualitatively, the same results persist in
higher dimensions.
