Phase separation in a boson-fermion mixture of Lithium atoms

We use a semiclassical three-fluid model to analyze the conditions for spatial phase separation in a mixture of fermionic Li-6 and a (stable) Bose-Einstein condensate of Li-7 atoms under cylindrical harmonic confinement, both at zero and finite temperature. We show that with the parameters of the Paris experiment [F. Schrek et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 87 080403 (2001)] an increase of the boson-fermion scattering length by a factor five would be sufficient to enter the phase-separated regime. We give examples of configurations for the density profiles in phase separation and estimate that the transition should persist at temperatures typical of current experiments. For higher values of the boson-fermion coupling we also find a new phase separation between the fermions and the bosonic thermal cloud at finite temperature.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, new version of Fig. 4 and typos correcte

Collisional oscillations of trapped boson-fermion mixtures approaching collapse

We study the collective modes of a confined gaseous cloud of bosons and fermions with mutual attractive interactions at zero temperature. The cloud consists of a Bose-Einstein condensate and a spin-polarized Fermi gas inside a spherical harmonic trap and the coupling between the two species is varied by increasing either the magnitude of the interspecies s-wave scattering length or the number of bosons. The mode frequencies are obtained in the collisional regime by solving the equations of generalized hydrodynamics and are compared with the spectra calculated in the collisionless regime within a random-phase approximation. We find that, as the mixture is driven towards the collapse instability, the frequencies of the modes of fermionic origin show a blue shift which can become very significant for large numbers of bosons. Instead the modes of bosonic origin show a softening, which becomes most pronounced in the very proximity of collapse. Explicit illustrations of these trends are given for the monopolar spectra, but similar trends are found for the dipolar and quadrupolar spectra except for the surface (n=0) modes which are essentially unaffected by the interactions.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, revtex

Particle density and non-local kinetic energy density functional for two-dimensional harmonically confined Fermi vapors

We evaluate analytically some ground state properties of two-dimensional harmonically confined Fermi vapors with isotropy and for an arbitrary number of closed shells. We first derive a differential form of the virial theorem and an expression for the kinetic energy density in terms of the fermion particle density and its low-order derivatives. These results allow an explicit differential equation to be obtained for the particle density. The equation is third-order, linear and homogeneous. We also obtain a relation between the turning points of kinetic energy and particle densities, and an expression of the non-local kinetic energy density functional.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figure

Linear density response in the random phase approximation for confined Bose vapours at finite temperature

A linear response framework is set up for the evaluation of collective excitations in a confined vapour of interacting Bose atoms at finite temperature. Focusing on the currently relevant case of contact interactions between the atoms, the theory is developed within a random phase approximation with exchange. This approach is naturally introduced in a two-fluid description by expressing the density response of both the condensate and the non-condensate in terms of the response of a Hartree-Fock reference gas to the selfconsistent Hartree-Fock potentials. Such an approximate account of correlations (i) preserves an interplay between the condensate and the non-condensate through off-diagonal components of the response, which instead vanish in the Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov approximation; and (ii) yields a common resonant structure for the four partial response functions. The theory reduces to the temperature-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogolubov-Popov approximation for the fluctuations of the condensate when its coupling with the density fluctuations of the non-condensate is neglected. Analytic results are presented which are amenable to numerical calculations and to inclusion of damping rates.Comment: 14 pages. To appear on J. Phys. : Condens. Matte

Collective excitations of a trapped degenerate Fermi gas

We evaluate the small-amplitude excitations of a spin-polarized vapour of Fermi atoms confined inside a harmonic trap. The dispersion law $\omega=\omega_{f}[l+4n(n+l+2)/3]^{1/2}$ is obtained for the vapour in the collisional regime inside a spherical trap of frequency $\omega_{f}$, with $n$ the number of radial nodes and $l$ the orbital angular momentum. The low-energy excitations are also treated in the case of an axially symmetric harmonic confinement. The collisionless regime is discussed with main reference to a Landau-Boltzmann equation for the Wigner distribution function: this equation is solved within a variational approach allowing an account for non-linearities. A comparative discussion of the eigenmodes of oscillation for confined Fermi and Bose vapours is presented in an Appendix.Comment: 14 pages, no figures, accepted for publication in Eur.Phys.Jour.