Sound propagation in a Bose-Fermi mixture: from weak to strong interactions

Abstract

Particle-like excitations, or quasi-particles, emerging from interacting fermionic and bosonic quantum fields underlie many intriguing quantum phenomena in high energy and condensed matter systems. Computation of the properties of these excitations is frequently intractable in the strong interaction regime. Quantum degenerate Bose-Fermi mixtures offer promising prospects to elucidate the physics of such quasi-particles. In this work, we investigate phonon propagation in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate immersed in a degenerate Fermi gas with interspecies scattering length $a_\text{BF}$ tuned by a Feshbach resonance. We observe sound mode softening with moderate attractive interactions. For even greater attraction, surprisingly, stable sound propagation re-emerges and persists across the resonance. The stability of phonons with resonant interactions opens up opportunities to investigate novel Bose-Fermi liquids and fermionic pairing in the strong interaction regime.