Insulator phases of a mixture of spinor fermions and hard-core bosons

Abstract

We study numerically a one-dimensional mixture of spin-$\frac{1}{2}$ fermions and scalar bosons in the hard-core limit. Considering repulsive fermion-fermion and boson-fermion interactions, we find superfluid and insulator states whose phase diagram is calculated. We determine that given a fermionic density ${\rho }_F$, the insulator states are located at the bosonic densities ${\rho }_B=1-{\rho }_F$ and ${\rho }_B=1-\frac{1}{2}{\rho }_F$, and emerge even in the absence of fermion-fermion coupling. In addition, the boson-fermion repulsion drives quantum phase transitions inside the insulator lobes with ${\rho }_B=1/2$. Our predictions could be observed in current cold-atom experimental platforms.

8 pages, 6 figures. Comments are welcome