Finite-Temperature Study of Bose-Fermi Superfluid Mixtures

TL;DR

This paper investigates how finite-temperature effects influence phase separation and superfluidity in trapped Bose-Fermi mixtures, revealing complex interplay and sensitivity to experimental conditions.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of phase transitions and phase separation in Bose-Fermi mixtures within realistic traps, highlighting the impact of finite temperature and dimensionality.

Findings

Phase separation can occur alongside superfluid phase transitions.

The ground state is highly sensitive to experimental parameters.

Finite temperature effects significantly influence phase behavior.

Abstract

Ultra-cold atom experiments offer the unique opportunity to study mixing of different types of superfluid states. Our interest is in superfluid mixtures comprising particles with different statistics- Bose and Fermi. Such scenarios occur naturally, for example, in dense QCD matter. Interestingly, cold atomic experiments are performed in traps with finite spatial extent, thus critically destabilizing the occurrence of various homogeneous phases. Critical to this analysis is the understanding that the trapped system can undergo phase separation, resulting in a unique situation where phase transition in either species (bosons or fermions) can overlap with the phase separation between possible phases. In the present work, we illustrate how this intriguing interplay manifests in an interacting 2-species atomic mixture - one bosonic and another fermionic with two spin components - within a realistic trap configuration. We further show that such interplay of transitions can render the nature of the ground state to be highly sensitive to the experimental parameters and the dimensionality of the system.