Strongly correlated Fermi-Bose mixtures in disordered optical lattices

We investigate theoretically the low-temperature physics of a two-component ultracold mixture of bosons and fermions in disordered optical lattices. We focus on the strongly correlated regime. We show that, under specific conditions, composite fermions, made of one fermion plus one bosonic hole, form. The composite picture is used to derive an effective Hamiltonian whose parameters can be controlled via the boson-boson and the boson-fermion interactions, the tunnelling terms and the inhomogeneities. We finally investigate the quantum phase diagram of the composite fermions and show that it corresponds to the formation of Fermi glasses, spin glasses and quantum percolation regimes. © 2006 IOP Publishing Ltd.