Polarizing the medium: Fermion-mediated interactions between bosons

Abstract

We consider a homogeneous mixture of bosons and polarized fermions. We find that long-range and attractive fermion-mediated interactions between bosons have dramatic effects on the properties of the bosons. We construct the phase diagram spanned by boson-fermion mass ratio and boson-fermion scattering parameter. It consists of stable region of mixing and unstable region toward phase separation. In stable mixing phase, the collective long-wavelength excitations can either be well-behaved with infinite lifetime or be finite in lifetime suffered from the Landau damping. We examine the effects of the induced interaction on the properties of weakly interacting bosons. It turns out that the induced interaction not only enhances the repulsion between the bosons against collapse but also enhances the stability of the superfluid state by suppressing quantum depletion.