Contributor info: Dr Dmitry Petrov

Jules Givois, Andrea Tononi, and Dmitry S. Petrov

SciPost Phys. 14, 091 (2023) · published 3 May 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

For sufficiently large mass ratios the attractive exchange force caused by a single light atom interacting with a few heavy identical fermions can overcome their Fermi degeneracy pressure and bind them into an $N+1$ cluster. Here, by using a mean-field approach valid for large $N$, we find that $N+1$ clusters can attract each other and form a self-bound charge density wave, the properties of which we fully characterize. Our work shows that there are no fundamental obstacles for having self-bound states in fermionic mixtures with zero-range interactions.