arXiv:1010.5333 · Physical Review Letters
Effect of Interactions on Harmonically Confined Bose-Fermi Mixtures in Optical Lattices
Michiel Snoek, Irakli Titvinidze, Immanuel Bloch, Walter Hofstetter
Abstract
We investigate a Bose-Fermi mixture in a three-dimensional optical lattice, trapped in a harmonic potential. Using generalized dynamical mean-field theory, which treats the Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi interaction in a fully nonperturbative way, we show that for experimentally relevant parameters a peak in the condensate fraction close to the point of vanishing Bose-Fermi interaction is reproduced within a single-band framework. We identify two physical mechanisms contributing to this effect: the spatial redistribution of particles when the interspecies interaction is changed and the reduced phase space for strong interactions, which results in a higher temperature at fixed entropy.