Boson-fermion demixing and collapse in low dimensions

Abstract

We evaluate in a mean-field model the equilibrium stability conditions of a gaseous mixture of bosonic and spin-polarized fermionic atoms inside a pancake-shaped or a cigar-shaped harmonic trap, under conditions such that the trap thickness approaches the magnitude of the s-wave scattering lengths but the atoms still experience collisions in three dimensions. With decreasing dimensionality, the Fermi pressure plays an increasingly dominant role. Full demixing in the case of repulsive boson-fermion interactions can be induced by squeezing the thickness of the clouds in a pancake-shaped trap or by lowering the number of trapped fermions in a cigar-shaped trap. Collapse under attractive interspecies interaction in quasi-one-dimensional confinement is inhibited within the range of validity of a mean-field model.