Fermion-mediated long-range interactions of bosons in the one-dimensional Bose-Fermi-Hubbard model

The ground-state phase diagram of mixtures of spin polarized fermions and bosons in a 1D periodic lattice is discussed in the limit of large fermion hopping and half filling of the fermions. Numerical simulations performed with the density matrix renormalization group (DMRG) show in addition to bosonic Mott insulating (MI), superfluid (SF), and charge density-wave phases (CDW) a yet unreported phase with spatial separation of MI and CDW regions. We derive an effective bosonic theory which allows for a complete understanding and quantitative prediction of the bosonic phase diagram. In particular the origin of CDW phase and the MI-CDW phase separation is revealed as an effective fermion-mediated long-range interaction between bosons with alternating sign.