Fermionization of a strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture in a one-dimensional harmonic trap

Abstract

We consider a strongly interacting one-dimensional (1D) Bose-Fermi mixture confined in a harmonic trap. It consists of a Tonks-Girardeau (TG) gas (1D Bose gas with repulsive hard-core interactions) and of a noninteracting Fermi gas (1D spin-aligned Fermi gas), both species interacting through hard-core repulsive interactions. Using a generalized Bose-Fermi mapping, we determine the one-body density matrices, exact particle density profiles, momentum distributions, and behavior of the mixture under 1D expansion when opening the trap. In real space, bosons and fermions do not display any phase separation: the respective density profiles extend over the same region and they both present a number of peaks equal to the total number of particles in the trap. In momentum space the bosonic component has the typical narrow TG profile, while the fermionic component shows a broad distribution with fermionic oscillations at small momenta. Due to the large boson-fermion repulsive interactions, both the bosonic and the fermionic momentum distributions decay as C p-4 at large momenta, like in the case of a pure bosonic TG gas. The coefficient C is related to the two-body density matrix and to the bosonic concentration in the mixture. When opening the trap, both momentum distributions "fermionize" under expansion and turn into that of a Fermi gas with a particle number equal to the total number of particles in the mixture. © 2009 The American Physical Society.