English

Fermi-Bose mixture across a Feshbach resonance

Other Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v1 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We study a dilute mixture of degenerate bosons and fermions across a Feshbach resonance of the Fermi-Fermi scattering length aFa_F. This scattering length is renormalized by the boson-induced interaction between fermions and its value is crucial to determine the phase diagram of the system. For the mixture in a box and a positive Bose-Fermi scattering length, we show that there are three possibilities: a single uniform mixed phase, a purely fermionic phase coexisting with a mixed phase, and a purely fermionic phase coexisting with a purely bosonic one. As 1/aF1/a_F is increased from a negative value to the Feshbach resonance (1/aF=01/a_F=0) the region of pure separation increases and the other two regions are strongly reduced. Above the Feshbach resonance (1/aF>01/a_F>0), pairs of Fermi atoms become Bose-condensed molecules. We find that these molecules are fully spatially separated from the bosonic atoms when 1/aF1/a_F exceedes a critical value. For a negative Bose-Fermi scattering length we deduce the condition for collapse, which coincides with the onset of dynamical instability of the fully mixed phase. We consider also the mixture in a harmonic trap and determine the conditions for partial demixing, full demixing and collapse. The experimental implications of our results are investigated by analyzing mixtures of 6^6Li--23^{23}Na and 40^{40}K--87^{87}Rb atoms.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0701098,
  title  = {Fermi-Bose mixture across a Feshbach resonance},
  author = {Luca Salasnich and Flavio Toigo},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0701098},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

9 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Phys. Rev. A