Interacting Fermi Gases in Disordered One-Dimensional Lattices

Interacting two-component Fermi gases loaded in a one-dimensional (1D) lattice and subject to harmonic trapping exhibit intriguing compound phases in which fluid regions coexist with local Mott-insulator and/or band-insulator regions. Motivated by experiments on cold atoms inside disordered optical lattices, we present a theoretical study of the effects of a random potential on these ground-state phases. Within a density-functional scheme we show that disorder has two main effects: (i) it destroys the local insulating regions if it is sufficiently strong compared with the on-site atom-atom repulsion, and (ii) it induces an anomaly in the compressibility at low density from quenching of percolation.