We explore the ground-state properties of a single impurity immersed in a one-dimensional quantum droplet medium formed by a two-component Bose mixture. Relying on ab initio simulations, we demonstrate that tuning the impurity–droplet interactions allows to controllably reshape the droplets’ density profiles and associated correlation patterns. For attractive impurity-medium couplings, the impurity becomes localized within the droplet, which exhibits a density hump at the vicinity of the impurity, while repulsive interactions facilitate phase separation. Comparing our many-body results with the appropriate extended Gross–Pitaevskii description, we find adequate agreement for the droplet density profiles, with the effective field approach systematically overestimating impurity localization. Following a release of the external trap, we unveil that the sign and magnitude of the interactions between the impurity and the droplet hosts dictate the response of the three-component setting, which experiences expansion unless strongly attractive intercomponent couplings are present. These results corroborate the role and presence of correlations in impurity–droplet mixtures and inspire future investigations on impurity physics for probing droplet configurations.
Diplaris et al. (Tue,) studied this question.