Schematic phase diagram and collective excitations in the collisional regime for trapped boson-fermion mixtures at zero temperature

Abstract

We discuss the ground state and the small-amplitude excitations of dilute boson-fermion mixtures confined in spherical harmonic traps at $T = 0$, assuming repulsive boson-boson interactions and with each component being in a single hyperfine state. From previous studies of the equilibrium density profiles we propose a schematic phase diagram in a plane defined by the variables $a_{bf}/a_{bb}$ and $a_{bb}k_f^{(0)}$, where $a_{bb}$ and $a_{bf}$ are the boson-boson and boson-fermion scattering lengths and $k_f^{(0)}$ is the Fermi wave number at the centre of the trap. With this background we turn to the equations of motion for density fluctuations in the collisional regime and discuss some general features of the eigenmodes. We display analytic solutions for sound waves in a quasi-homogeneous mixture and for surface modes at weak fermion-boson coupling.