2007/11/30 by C. N. Varney, Christopher Varney, V. G. Rousseau +2
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Optical properties and cooling technologies in crystalline materials #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #cond-mat.other #cond-mat.quant-gas
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.77.041608
published as Phys. Rev. A 77, 041608(R) (2008) · 4 pages, 6 figures
openalex publication_date 2008/04/23 · arxiv created 2008/07/30 · arxiv updated 2010/04/09 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The study of ultracold optically trapped atoms has opened new vistas in the physics of correlated quantum systems. Much attention has now turned to mixtures of bosonic and fermionic atoms. A central puzzle is the disagreement between the experimental observation of a reduced bosonic visibility Vb, and quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations which show Vb increasing. In this paper, we present QMC simulations which evaluate the density profiles and Vb of mixtures of bosons and fermions in one-dimensional optical lattices. We resolve the discrepancy between theory and experiment by identifying parameter regimes where Vb is reduced, and where it is increased. We present a simple qualitative picture of the different response to the fermion admixture in terms of the superfluid and Mott-insulating domains before and after the fermions are included. Finally, we show that Vb exhibits kinks which are tied to the domain evolution present in the pure case, and also additional structure arising from the formation of boson-fermion molecules, a prediction for future experiments.