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Title: Collective excitations of a trapped boson-fermion mixture across demixing

Journal Article · · Physical Review. A
; ;  [1]
  1. NEST-INFM and Classe di Scienze, Scuola Normale Superiore, Piazza dei Cavalieri 7, I-56126 Pisa (Italy)

We calculate the spectrum of low-lying collective excitations in a mesoscopic cloud formed by a Bose-Einstein condensate and a spin-polarized Fermi gas as a function of the boson-fermion repulsions. The cloud is under isotropic harmonic confinement and its dynamics is treated in the collisional regime by using the equations of generalized hydrodynamics with inclusion of surface effects. For large numbers of bosons, we find that as the cloud moves towards spatial separation (demixing) with increasing boson-fermion coupling, the frequencies of a set of collective modes show a softening followed by a sharp upturn. This behavior permits a clear identification of the quantum phase transition. We propose a physical interpretation for the dynamical transition point in a confined mixture, leading to a simple analytical expression for its location.

OSTI ID:
20636401
Journal Information:
Physical Review. A, Vol. 67, Issue 5; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevA.67.053605; (c) 2003 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1050-2947
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English