  Recent experiments on ultracold atomic alkali gases in a one-dimensional
optical lattice have demonstrated the transition from a gas of soft-core bosons
to a Tonks-Girardeau gas in the hard-core limit, where one-dimensional bosons
behave like fermions in many respects. We have studied the underlying many-body
physics through numerical simulations which accommodate both the soft-core and
hard-core limits in one single framework. We find that the Tonks-Girardeau gas
is reached only at the strongest optical lattice potentials. Results for
slightly higher densities, where the gas develops a Mott-like phase already at
weaker optical lattice potentials, show that these Mott-like short range
correlations do not enhance the convergence to the hard-core limit.
