Matter waves of Bose-Fermi mixtures in one-dimensional optical lattices

Abstract

We describe solitary wave excitations in a Bose-Fermi mixture loaded in a one-dimensional and strongly elongated lattice. We focus on the mean-field theory under the condition that the fermion number significantly exceeds the boson number, and limit our consideration to lattice amplitudes corresponding to the order of a few recoil energies or less. In such a case, the fermionic atoms display ``metallic'' behavior and are well-described by the effective mass approximation. After classifying the relevant cases, we concentrate on gap solitons and coupled gap solitons in the two limiting cases of large and small fermion density, respectively. In the former, the fermionic atoms are distributed almost homogeneously and thus can move freely along the lattice. In the latter, the fermionic density becomes negligible in the potential maxima, and this leads to negligible fermionic current in the linear regime.