Gaussian potentials facilitate access to quantum Hall states in rotating Bose gases.
Through exact numerical diagonalization for small numbers of atoms, we show that it is possible to access quantum Hall states in harmonically confined Bose gases at rotation frequencies well below the centrifugal limit by applying a repulsive Gaussian potential at the trap center. The main idea is to reduce or eliminate the effective trapping frequency in regions where the particle density is appreciable. The critical rotation frequency required to obtain the bosonic Laughlin state can be fixed at an experimentally accessible value by choosing an applied Gaussian whose amplitude increases linearly with the number of atoms while its width increases as the square root.