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Possible quantum phase-manipulation of a two-leg ladder in mixed-dimensional fermionic cold atoms

The recent realization of mixed-dimensional systems of cold atoms has attracted much attention from both experimentalists and theorists. Different effective interactions and novel correlated quantum many-body phases may be engineered in these systems, with the different phases being tunable via external parameters. In this article we investigate a two-species Fermi atom mixture: one species of atom exists in two hyperfine states and is confined to move in a two-leg ladder, interacting with an on-site interaction, and the other moves freely in a two dimensional square lattice that contains the two-leg ladder. The two species of atoms interact via an on-site interaction on the ladder. In the limit of weak inter-species interactions, the two-dimensional gas can be integrated out, leading to an effective long-range mediated interaction in the ladder, generated by to the on-site inter-species interaction. We show that the form of the mediated interaction can be controlled by the density of the two-dimensional gas and that it enhances the charge density wave instability in the two-leg ladder after the renormalization group transformation. Parameterizing the phase diagram with various experimentally controllable quantities, we discuss the possible tuning of the macroscopic quantum many-body phases of the two-leg ladder in this mixed-dimensional fermionic cold atom system.