Bose-Fermi $N$-polaron state emergence from correlation-mediated blocking of phase separation

Abstract

We study $N$ fermionic impurities in a one-dimensional lattice bosonic bath at unit filling. Using DMRG and mixed boundary conditions-periodic for bosons, open for fermions -- we find an $N$-polaron ground state replacing phase separation at high interspecies repulsion. This tightly bound state of clustered particles emerges due to strong impurity-bath correlations, which induce large impurity-impurity correlations that we quantify via the von Neumann entropy and bipartite mutual information, respectively. This system also reveals a fermionic self-localization effect from a Mott insulator background due to local correlations between the impurities and the bath. The growth of long-range correlations breaks this Mott phase, resulting in the transition to impurity clusters delocalized along the system. Finally, we show that there is a critical impurity number, which depends on intraspecies bosonic interaction, beyond which phase separation is recovered.

arXiv comment10 pages, 12 figures. Updated version with additional discussion on the multiple impurity case and system-size scaling