Finite temperature excitations of a trapped Bose-Fermi mixture.pdf

a r X i v : c o n d - m a t / 0 3 0 7 6 3 8 v 1 [ c o n d - m a t .s o f t ] 2 5 J u l 2 0 0 3 Finite temperature excitations of a trapped Bose-Fermi mixture Xia-Ji Liu1, 2 and Hui Hu3 1 LENS, Universita? di Firenze, Via Nello Carrara 1, 50019 Sesto Fiorentino, Italy 2 Institute of Theoretical Physics, Academia Sinica, Beijing 100080, China 3 Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, P. O. Box 586, Trieste 34100, Italy (Dated: February 2, 2008) We present a detailed study of the low-lying collective excitations of a spherically trapped Bose- Fermi mixture at finite temperature in the collisionless regime. The excitation frequencies of the condensate are calculated self-consistently using the static Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov theory within the Popov approximation. The frequency shifts and damping rates due to the coupled dynamics of the condensate, noncondensate, and degenerate Fermi gas are also taken into account by means of the random phase approximation and linear response theory. In our treatment, the dipole excitation remains close to the bare trapping frequency for all temperatures considered, and thus is consistent with the generalized Kohn theorem. We discuss in some detail the behavior of monopole and quadrupole excitations as a function of the Bose-Fermi coupling. At nonzero temperatures we find that, as the mixture moves towards spatial separation with increasing Bose-Fermi coupling, the damping rate of the monopole (quadrupole) excitation increases (decreases). This provides us a useful signature to identify the phase transition of spatial separation. PACS numbers: PACS numbers:03.75.Kk, 03.75.Ss, 67.60.-g, 67.40.Db I. INTRODUCTION The impressive experimental achievement of Bose- Einstein condensation (BEC) in the bosonic systems 87Rb [1], 23Na [2], and 7Li [3] has initiated and stimulated a whole new field of research in the physics of quantum atomic gases. Recently, several groups have extended these experiments to the case of trap