The properties of ultracold atomic Bose-Fermi mixtures in external potentials are investigated and the existence of gap solitons of Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices demonstrated. Using a self-consistent approach we compute the energy spectrum and show that gap solitons can be viewed as matter-wave realizations of quantum dots and antidots with the bosonic density playing the role of trapping (expulsive) potential for the fermions. The fermionic states trapped in the condensate are shown to be at the bottom of the Fermi sea and therefore well protected from thermal decoherence. Energy levels, filling factors, and parameters' dependence of gap soliton quantum dots are also calculated both numerically and analytically.
The properties of ultracold atomic Bose-Fermi mixtures in external potentials are investigated and the existence of gap solitons of Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices demonstrated. Using a self-consistent approach we compute the energy spectrum and show that gap solitons can be viewed as matter-wave realizations of quantum dots and antidots with the bosonic density playing the role of trapping (expulsive) potential for the fermions. The fermionic states trapped in the condensate are shown to be at the bottom of the Fermi sea and therefore well protected from thermal decoherence. Energy levels, filling factors, and parameters' dependence of gap soliton quantum dots are also calculated both numerically and analytically.
Using coupled equations for the bosonic and fermionic order parameters, we construct families of gap solitons (GSs) in a nearly one-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture trapped in a periodic optical-lattice (OL) potential, the boson and fermion components being in the states of the Bose-Einstein condensation and Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer superfluid, respectively. Fundamental GSs are compact states trapped, essentially, in a single cell of the lattice. Full families of such solutions are constructed in the first two band gaps of the OL-induced spectrum, by means of variational and numerical methods, which are found to be in good agreement. The families include both intragap and intergap solitons, with the chemical potentials of the boson and fermion components falling in the same or different band gaps, respectively. Nonfundamental states, extended over several lattice cells, are constructed too. The GSs are stable against strong perturbations.
We describe solitary wave excitations in a Bose-Fermi mixture loaded in a one-dimensional and strongly elongated lattice. We focus on the mean-field theory under the condition that the fermion number significantly exceeds the boson number, and limit our consideration to lattice amplitudes corresponding to the order of a few recoil energies or less. In such a case, the fermionic atoms display ``metallic'' behavior and are well-described by the effective mass approximation. After classifying the relevant cases, we concentrate on gap solitons and coupled gap solitons in the two limiting cases of large and small fermion density, respectively. In the former, the fermionic atoms are distributed almost homogeneously and thus can move freely along the lattice. In the latter, the fermionic density becomes negligible in the potential maxima, and this leads to negligible fermionic current in the linear regime.
A mixture of ultracold bosons and fermions placed in an optical lattice constitutes a novel kind of quantum gas, and leads to phenomena, which so far has been discussed neither in atomic physics, nor in condensed matter physics. We discuss the phase diagram at low temperatures, and in the limit of strong atom-atom interactions, and predict the existence of quantum phases that involve pairing of fermions with one or more bosons, or, respectively, bosonic holes. The resulting composite fermions may form, depending on the system parameters, a normal Fermi liquid, a density wave, a superfluid liquid, or an insulator with fermionic domains. We discuss the feasibility for observing such phases in current experiments.
Optical lattices have been used as a versatile toolbox to control Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in recent years, and a wealth of emergent nonlinear phenomena have been found, including bright gap solitons and dark ones, among which the former has been realized in experiments. The latter, however, has only theoretical results and its fundamental properties are still not well understood. Here we theoretically and numerically explore an open issue of creating stable matter-wave dark gap solitons in a one-dimensional optical lattice, onto which the BECs with self-defocusing quintic nonlinearity are loaded. Using linear-stability analysis and direct simulations, the formation, structures, and properties of dark gap solitons in quintic nonlinearity have been compared to those upheld by cubic Kerr nonlinearity. In particular, we uncover that the dark gap solitons and soliton clusters are robustly stable in the first finite band gap of the underlying linear spectrum, and are hard to be stabilized in the second gap. The predicted dark gap solitons are observable in current experiments on dense ultracold atoms, using an optical lattice technique, and in the optics domain for nonlinear light propagation in periodic optical media with quintic nonlinearity.
We study the quantum phase diagrams of Bose-Fermi mixtures of ultracold atoms confined to one dimension in an optical lattice. For systems with incommensurate densities, various quantum phases, e.g., spin- or charge-density waves, pairing, phase separation, and the Wigner crystal, are found to be dominant in different parameter regimes within a bosonization approach. The structure of the phase diagram leads us to propose that the system is best understood as a Luttinger liquid of polarons (i.e., atoms of one species surrounded by screening clouds of the other species). Special fillings, half filling for fermions, and unit filling for bosons, and the resulting gapped phases are also discussed, as well as the properties of the polarons and the experimental realization of these phases.
Moiré superlattices, a twisted functional structure crossing the periodic and nonperiodic potentials, have recently attracted great interest in multidisciplinary fields, including optics and ultracold atoms, because of their unique band structures, physical properties, and potential implications. Driven by recent experiments on quantum phenomena of bosonic gases, the atomic Bose–Einstein condensates in moiré optical lattices, by which other quantum gases such as ultracold fermionic atoms are trapped, could be readily achieved in ultracold atom laboratories, whereas the associated nonlinear localization mechanism remains unexploited. Here, we report the nonlinear localization theory of ultracold atomic Fermi gases in two-dimensional moiré optical lattices. The linear Bloch-wave spectrum of such a twisted structure exhibits rich nontrivial flat bands, which are separated by different finite bandgaps wherein the existence, properties, and dynamics of localized superfluid Fermi gas structures of two types, gap solitons and gap vortices (topological modes) with vortex charge S=1, are studied numerically. Our results demonstrate the wide stability regions and robustness of these localized structures, opening up a new avenue for studying soliton physics and moiré physics in ultracold atoms beyond bosonic gases.