TY - JOUR T1 - Heavy fermions in an optical lattice JF - Physical Review A Y1 - 2010 A1 - Michael Foss-Feig A1 - Michael Hermele A1 - Victor Gurarie A1 - Ana Maria Rey AB - We employ a mean-field theory to study ground-state properties and transport of a two-dimensional gas of ultracold alklaline-earth metal atoms governed by the Kondo Lattice Hamiltonian plus a parabolic confining potential. In a homogenous system this mean-field theory is believed to give a qualitatively correct description of heavy fermion metals and Kondo insulators: it reproduces the Kondo-like scaling of the quasiparticle mass in the former, and the same scaling of the excitation gap in the latter. In order to understand ground-state properties in a trap we extend this mean-field theory via local-density approximation. We find that the Kondo insulator gap manifests as a shell structure in the trapped density profile. In addition, a strong signature of the large Fermi surface expected for heavy fermion systems survives the confinement, and could be probed in time-of-flight experiments. From a full self-consistent diagonalization of the mean-field theory we are able to study dynamics in the trap. We find that the mass enhancement of quasiparticle excitations in the heavy Fermi liquid phase manifests as slowing of the dipole oscillations that result from a sudden displacement of the trap center. VL - 82 UR - http://arxiv.org/abs/1007.5083v1 CP - 5 J1 - Phys. Rev. A U5 - 10.1103/PhysRevA.82.053624 ER -