Sound Propagation in a Bose-Fermi Mixture: From Weak to Strong Interactions.

Particlelike excitations, or quasiparticles, 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 quasiparticles. In this work, we investigate phonon propagation in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate immersed in a degenerate Fermi gas with interspecies scattering length a_{BF} tuned by a Feshbach resonance. We observe sound mode softening with moderate attractive interactions. For even greater attraction, surprisingly, stable sound propagation reemerges 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.

Observation of fermion-mediated interactions between bosonic atoms.

In high-energy and condensed-matter physics, particle exchange has an essential role in the understanding of long-range interactions and correlations. For example, the exchange of massive bosons leads to the Yukawa potential1,2, and phonon exchange between electrons gives rise to Cooper pairing in superconductors3. Here we show that, when a Bose-Einstein condensate of caesium atoms is embedded in a degenerate Fermi gas of lithium atoms, interspecies interactions can give rise to an effective trapping potential, damping, and attractive boson-boson interactions mediated by fermions. The latter, which is related to the Ruderman-Kittel-Kasuya-Yosida mechanism4, results from a coherent three-body scattering process. Such mediated interactions are expected to form new magnetic phases5 and supersolids6. We show that under suitable conditions, the mediated interactions can convert a stable Bose-Einstein condensate into a train of 'Bose-Fermi solitons'7,8. The predicted long-range nature of the mediated interactions opens up the possibility of correlating distant atoms and preparing new quantum phases.