We calculate the spectrum of low-lying collective excitations in a gaseous
cloud formed by a Bose-Einstein condensate and a spin-polarized Fermi gas over
a range of the boson-fermion coupling strength extending from strongly
repulsive to strongly attractive. Increasing boson-fermion repulsions drive the
system towards spatial separation of its components (``demixing''), whereas
boson-fermion attractions drive it towards implosion (``collapse''). The
dynamics of the system is treated in the experimentally relevant collisionless
regime by means of a Random-Phase approximation and the behavior of a
mesoscopic cloud under isotropic harmonic confinement is contrasted with that
of a macroscopic mixture at given average particle densities. In the latter
case the locations of both the demixing and the collapse phase transitions are
sharply defined by the same stability condition, which is determined by the
softening of an eigenmode of either fermionic or bosonic origin. In contrast,
the transitions to either demixing or collapse in a mesoscopic cloud at fixed
confinement and particle numbers are spread out over a range of boson-fermion
coupling strength, and some initial decrease of the frequencies of a set of
collective modes is followed by hardening as evidenced by blue shifts of most
eigenmodes. The spectral hardening can serve as a signal of the impending
transition and is most evident when the number of bosons in the cloud is
relatively large. We propose physical interpretations for these dynamical
behaviors with the help of suitably defined partial compressibilities for the
gaseous cloud under confinement.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, revtex
