Phase Separation of a Fast Rotating Boson-Fermion Mixture in the Lowest-Landau-Level Regime

TL;DR

This paper studies the ground-state behavior of a rapidly rotating boson-fermion mixture in a 2D trap, revealing vortex formation, maximum-density-droplet states, and phase separation linked to Landau-level structures.

Contribution

It introduces a mean-field approach to analyze phase separation and vortex states in a rotating boson-fermion mixture within the lowest-Landau-level regime.

Findings

Vortices form in the bosonic condensate at high rotation frequencies.

A maximum-density-droplet state appears for degenerate fermions.

Phase separation occurs as boson-fermion coupling increases.

Abstract

By minimizing the coupled mean-field energy functionals, we investigate the ground-state properties of a rotating atomic boson-fermion mixture in a two-dimensional parabolic trap. At high angular frequencies in the mean-field-lowest-Landau-level regime, quantized vortices enter the bosonic condensate, and a finite number of degenerate fermions form the maximum-density-droplet state. As the boson-fermion coupling constant increases, the maximum density droplet develops into a lower-density state associated with the phase separation, revealing characteristics of a Landau-level structure.