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Ground state properties of a three-site Bose-Fermi ring with a small number of atoms

We investigate a three-site ring system with a small number of quantum degenerate bosons and fermions. By means of the exact diagonalization of the Bose-Fermi-Hubbard Hamiltonian, we show that the symmetry of the ground state configuration is a function of both the boson-boson and the inter-species interaction in the system. The phase diagram of the system, constructed by computing the exact two-body spatial correlations, reveals nontrivial insulating phases that exist even in the strong bosonic tunneling limit and for incommensurate filling of bosons. These insulating phases are due to the inter-species interactions in the system and are not necessarily accompanied by the suppression of the particle number fluctuations.