Polaronic slowing of fermionic impurities in lattice Bose-Fermi mixtures

Abstract

We generalize the application of small polaron theory to ultracold gases [M. Bruderer, A. Klein, S. R. Clark, and D. Jaksch, New J. Phys. 10, 033015 (2008)] to the case of Bose-Fermi mixtures, where both components are loaded into an optical lattice. In a suitable range of parameters, the mixture can be described within a Bogoliubov approach in the presence of fermionic (dynamic) impurities; an effective description in terms of polarons applies. In the dilute limit of the slow-impurity regime, the hopping of fermionic particles is exponentially renormalized due to polaron formation, regardless of the sign of the Bose-Fermi interaction. This should lead to clear experimental signatures of polaronic effects, once the regime of interest is reached. The validity of our approach is analyzed in the light of currently available experiments. We provide results for the hopping renormalization factor for different values of temperature, density, and Bose-Fermi interaction for three-dimensional $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$-$^{40}\mathrm{K}$ mixtures in an optical lattice.