Effect of interactions on harmonically confined Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices

Abstract

We investigate a Bose-Fermi mixture in a three-dimensional optical lattice, trapped in a harmonic potential. Using Generalized Dynamical Mean-Field theory, which treats the Bose-Bose and Bose-Fermi interaction in a fully non-perturbative way, we show that for experimentally relevant parameters a peak in the condensate fraction close to the point of vanishing Bose-Fermi interaction is reproduced within a single band framework. We identify two physical mechanisms contributing to this effect: the spatial redistribution of particles when the interspecies interaction is changed and the reduced phase space for strong interactions, which results in a higher temperature at fixed entropy.