Medium-enhanced polaron repulsion in a dilute Bose mixture

We investigate the fundamental problem of a small density of bosonic impurities immersed in a dilute Bose gas at zero temperature. Within the perturbative regime of weak interactions, we show that the presence of the surrounding medium can lead to an enhanced repulsion between dressed bosonic impurities (polarons) rather than an induced attraction, in contrast to prevailing theories. Moreover, we find that the induced polaron-polaron interactions only become attractive when the impurity-boson interactions are sufficiently strong that the system is unstable towards either phase separation or collapse/droplet formation. Our work highlights the role of polaron condensation in polaron-polaron interactions, and it has important implications for theories of induced interactions in general.