We determine the ground state properties of inhomogeneous mixtures of bosons and fermions in cubic lattices and parabolic confining potentials. For finite hopping we determine the domain boundaries between Mott-insulator plateaux and hopping-dominated regions for lattices of arbitrary dimension within mean-field and perturbation theory. The results are compared with a new numerical method that is based on a Gutzwiller variational approach for the bosons and an exact treatment for the fermions. The findings can be applied as a guideline for future experiments with trapped atomic Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices.

• Received 29 October 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.190405