  The Luther-Emery liquid is a state of matter that is predicted to occur in
one-dimensional systems of interacting fermions and is characterized by a
gapless charge spectrum and a gapped spin spectrum. In this Letter we discuss a
realization of the Luther-Emery phase in a trapped cold-atom gas. We study by
means of the density-matrix renormalization-group technique a two-component
atomic Fermi gas with attractive interactions subject to parabolic trapping
inside an optical lattice. We demonstrate how this system exhibits compound
phases characterized by the coexistence of spin pairing and atomic-density
waves. A smooth crossover occurs with increasing magnitude of the atom-atom
attraction to a state in which tightly bound spin-singlet dimers occupy the
center of the trap. The existence of atomic-density waves could be detected in
the elastic contribution to the light-scattering diffraction pattern.
