Realization of a strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture from a two-component Fermi gas

Yong-il Shin, André Schirotzek, Christian H. Schunck, Wolfgang Ketterle

Published 2008-05-06Version 1

We show the emergence of a strongly interacting Bose-Fermi mixture from a two-component Fermi mixture with population imbalance. By analyzing in situ density profiles of $^6$Li atoms in the BCS-BEC crossover regime we identify a critical interaction strength, beyond which all minority atoms pair up with majority atoms, and form a Bose condensate. This is the regime where the system can be effectively described as a boson-fermion mixture. We determine the dimer-fermion and dimer-dimer scattering lengths and beyond-mean-field contributions. Our study realizes a Gedanken experiment of bosons immersed in a Fermi sea of one of their constituents, revealing the composite nature of the bosons.