Tunable Range Interactions and Multi-Roton Excitations for Bosons in a Bose-Fermi Mixture with Optical Lattices

In this article, we discuss a method to control the long-range interactions between bosons in a three-dimensional Bose-Fermi mixture with the help of optical lattices on fermions. We find the range and the peaked momentum of the fermion-mediated interactions can be tuned by the optical lattice depth and the fermion density. If the fermion density is close to half-filling, roton excitations can be generated with weak Bose-Fermi interactions. Further, if the fermions are not exact at half-filling, multi-roton structure may emerge, implying competing density orders. Therefore, tuning the lattice depth and the fermion density in a Bose-Fermi mixture serves as an effective way to control the interaction range and resonant momentum between bosons.