Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Log inSign up
Challenges
Datasets
Workspaces
Papers
Discussions
Leaderboard
Blog
Job Board
Q3AS

© 2026 Aqora Quantum S.A.S.

TermsPrivacyLegal Notice

arXiv:1004.2567 · Physical Review A

Effective field theory and dispersion law of the phonons of a nonrelativistic superfluid

Miguel Ángel Escobedo, Cristina Manuel

Published Aug 24, 2010• 22 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We study the recently proposed effective-field theory for the phonon of an arbitrary nonrelativistic superfluid. After computing the one-loop phonon self-energy, we obtain the low-temperature $T$ contributions to the phonon dispersion law at low momentum and see that the real part of those can be parametrized as a thermal correction to the phonon velocity. Because the phonons are the quanta of the sound waves, at low momentum their velocity should agree with the speed of sound. We find that our results match at order ${T}^{4}\mathrm{ln}T$ with those predicted by Andreev and Khalatnikov for the speed of sound, derived from the superfluid hydrodynamical equations and the phonon kinetic theory. We get also higher-order corrections of order ${T}^{4}$, which are not reproduced pushing naively the kinetic theory computation. Finally, as an application, we consider the cold Fermi gas in the unitarity limit and find a universal expression for the low-$T$ relative correction to the speed of sound for these systems.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.82.023614

Related papers

Bulk viscosities for cold Fermi superfluids close to the unitary limit

Miguel Ángel Escobedo, Massimo Mannarelli, Cristina Manuel

We compute the coefficients of bulk viscosity for a nonrelativistic superfluid corresponding to a fermionic system close to the unitarity limit. We consider the low temperature regime assuming that the transport properties of the system are dominated by phonons. To compute the coefficients of bulk viscosity we use kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation and the low energy effective field theory of the corresponding system. We show that the three independent bulk viscosity coefficients, ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1},{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2},{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{3}$, associated with irreversible flows vanish for phonons with a linear dispersion law. Considering a phonon dispersion law with a cubic term in momentum we find that in the conformal limit ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1}={\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}=0$, while ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{3}$ is nonzero. Including a conformal breaking term that arises for a large but finite $s$-wave scattering length, $a$, at the leading order in $1/a$ we obtain that ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1}\ensuremath{\propto}1/a$ and ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}\ensuremath{\propto}1/{a}^{2}$.

arXiv:0904.3023•Physical Review A•Jun 22, 2009•41 citations

On effective theory of superfluid phonons

Lasha Berezhiani

It is shown that the standard effective field theory of non-relativistic superfluids, which includes only the leading order action in derivative expansion, is in general inadequate for studying supersonic processes. Namely, for a proper treatment of the latter the phonons with momenta greater than mcs are relevant at times (with m being the mass of the superfluid constituent and cs denoting the sound-speed), which lie beyond the regime of validity of the naive effective theory mentioned above. This is demonstrated on a concrete example by recovering the known expression for the friction force as a process of radiating phonons by a supersonic perturber. In particular, when the impurity is heavier than superfluid constituents, it is indeed necessary to extend the non-relativistic effective theory of superfluids to include high-derivative corrections. For the light perturber, however, there is a window of velocities for which high-derivative corrections are irrelevant.

arXiv:2001.08696•Physics Letters B•Apr 27, 2020•11 citations

Collisionless sound of bosonic superfluids in lower dimensions

Luca Salasnich, F. Sattin

The superfluidity of low-temperature bosons is well established in the collisional regime. In the collisionless regime, however, the presence of superfluidity is not yet fully clarified, in particular in lower spatial dimensions. Here, we compare the Vlasov-Landau equation, which does not take into account the superfluid nature of the bosonic system, with the Andreev-Khalatnikov equations, which instead explicitly contain a superfluid velocity. We show that recent experimental data of the sound mode in a two-dimensional collisionless Bose gas of $^{87}\mathrm{Rb}$ atoms are in good agreement with both theories, but the sound damping is better reproduced by the Andreev-Khalatnikov equations below the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless critical temperature ${T}_{c}$, while above ${T}_{c}$ the Vlasov-Landau results are closer to the experimental ones. For one-dimensional bosonic fluids, where experimental data are not yet available, we find larger differences between the sound velocities predicted by the two transport theories and, also in this case, the existence of a superfluid velocity reduces the sound damping.

arXiv:2010.15724•Physical Review A•Apr 19, 2021•1 citation

Thermal conductivity and sound attenuation in dilute atomic Fermi gases

Matt Braby, Jingyi Chao, Thomas Schäfer

We compute the thermal conductivity and sound attenuation length of a dilute atomic Fermi gas in the framework of kinetic theory. Above the critical temperature for superfluidity, ${T}_{c}$, the quasiparticles are fermions, whereas below ${T}_{c}$, the dominant excitations are phonons. We calculate the thermal conductivity in both cases. We find that at unitarity the thermal conductivity $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ in the normal phase scales as $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{3/2}$. In the superfluid phase we find $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{2}$. At high temperature the Prandtl number, the ratio of the momentum and thermal diffusion constants, is 2/3. The ratio increases as the temperature is lowered. As a consequence we expect sound attenuation in the normal phase just above ${T}_{c}$ to be dominated by shear viscosity. We comment on the possibility of extracting the shear viscosity of the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity using measurements of the sound absorption length.

arXiv:1003.2601•Physical Review A•Sep 27, 2010•51 citations

A low-energy effective Hamiltonian for Landau quasiparticles: II. Application to the contact Fermi gas

Pierre-Louis Taillat, Hadrien Kurkjian

This article follows up on arxiv:2511.15938, in which we developed an Hamiltonian renormalization scheme to construct a quantized theory of Fermi liquids. Here, we apply this formalism to a low-temperature atomic Fermi gas where the short-range interactions are fully parametrized by the s-wave scattering length $a$. We benchmark our renormalized theory by recovering known perturbative results on the static properties of the Fermi gas, such as the Lee-Huang-Yang expansion of the equation of state, the Galitskii expansion of the momentum distribution, and the Gor'kov-Melik Barkhudarov preexponential correction to the critical temperature. We then turn to the transport dynamics and demonstrate the presence of a preexponential correction to the speed of zero sound when including corrections of second order in $a$. Finally, we develop an efficient numerical method to solve the transport equation exactly, and we apply it to study the crossover from the collisionless to the hydrodynamic regime in the density and polarisation response functions.

arXiv:2607.07041•Jul 8, 2026•0 citations

Hydrodynamics of superfluid liquid crystals

A. É. Meǐerovich

A system of hydrodynamic equations has been obtained for superfluid Fermi systems with singlet pairing and nonzero momentum which are formed, e.g., in the case of small polarization of the spin system. As a result, the energy gap is a periodic function of the coordinates and a spin-density wave is formed. For such systems the complete set of dynamic variables includes both purely hydrodynamic (superfluid and normal) velocities and the displacement vector corresponding to the violations of the translational invariance. All of the tensors of normal and superfluid densities that appear in the system as well as the elastic moduli have been calculated. A dispersion relation has been obtained for thermal vibrations (second sound) and elastic vibrations, and this relation has turned out to be substantially anisotropic. Observation of the predicted effects is most probable in 3He–He II solutions in magnetic fields of the order of several kilooersteds at low temperatures.

Soviet Journal of Low Temperature Physics•Jul 1, 1983•0 citations
We study the recently proposed effective-field theory for the phonon of an arbitrary nonrelativistic superfluid. After computing the one-loop phonon self-energy, we obtain the low-temperature TTT contributions to the phonon dispersion law at low momentum and see that the real part of those can be parametrized as a thermal correction to the phonon velocity. Because the phonons are the quanta of the sound waves, at low momentum their velocity should agree with the speed of sound. We find that our results match at order T4lnT{T}^{4}\mathrm{ln}TT4lnT with those predicted by Andreev and Khalatnikov for the speed of sound, derived from the superfluid hydrodynamical equations and the phonon kinetic theory. We get also higher-order corrections of order T4{T}^{4}T4, which are not reproduced pushing naively the kinetic theory computation. Finally, as an application, we consider the cold Fermi gas in the unitarity limit and find a universal expression for the low-TTT relative correction to the speed of sound for these systems.
We compute the coefficients of bulk viscosity for a nonrelativistic superfluid corresponding to a fermionic system close to the unitarity limit. We consider the low temperature regime assuming that the transport properties of the system are dominated by phonons. To compute the coefficients of bulk viscosity we use kinetic theory in the relaxation time approximation and the low energy effective field theory of the corresponding system. We show that the three independent bulk viscosity coefficients, ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1},{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2},{\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{3}$, associated with irreversible flows vanish for phonons with a linear dispersion law. Considering a phonon dispersion law with a cubic term in momentum we find that in the conformal limit ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1}={\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}=0$, while ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{3}$ is nonzero. Including a conformal breaking term that arises for a large but finite sss-wave scattering length, aaa, at the leading order in 1/a1/a1/a we obtain that ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{1}\ensuremath{\propto}1/a$ and ${\ensuremath{\zeta}}_{2}\ensuremath{\propto}1/{a}^{2}$.
It is shown that the standard effective field theory of non-relativistic superfluids, which includes only the leading order action in derivative expansion, is in general inadequate for studying supersonic processes. Namely, for a proper treatment of the latter the phonons with momenta greater than mcs are relevant at times (with m being the mass of the superfluid constituent and cs denoting the sound-speed), which lie beyond the regime of validity of the naive effective theory mentioned above. This is demonstrated on a concrete example by recovering the known expression for the friction force as a process of radiating phonons by a supersonic perturber. In particular, when the impurity is heavier than superfluid constituents, it is indeed necessary to extend the non-relativistic effective theory of superfluids to include high-derivative corrections. For the light perturber, however, there is a window of velocities for which high-derivative corrections are irrelevant.
The superfluidity of low-temperature bosons is well established in the collisional regime. In the collisionless regime, however, the presence of superfluidity is not yet fully clarified, in particular in lower spatial dimensions. Here, we compare the Vlasov-Landau equation, which does not take into account the superfluid nature of the bosonic system, with the Andreev-Khalatnikov equations, which instead explicitly contain a superfluid velocity. We show that recent experimental data of the sound mode in a two-dimensional collisionless Bose gas of 87Rb^{87}\mathrm{Rb}87Rb atoms are in good agreement with both theories, but the sound damping is better reproduced by the Andreev-Khalatnikov equations below the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless critical temperature Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, while above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ the Vlasov-Landau results are closer to the experimental ones. For one-dimensional bosonic fluids, where experimental data are not yet available, we find larger differences between the sound velocities predicted by the two transport theories and, also in this case, the existence of a superfluid velocity reduces the sound damping.
We compute the thermal conductivity and sound attenuation length of a dilute atomic Fermi gas in the framework of kinetic theory. Above the critical temperature for superfluidity, Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, the quasiparticles are fermions, whereas below Tc{T}_{c}Tc​, the dominant excitations are phonons. We calculate the thermal conductivity in both cases. We find that at unitarity the thermal conductivity $\ensuremath{\kappa}$ in the normal phase scales as $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{3/2}$. In the superfluid phase we find $\ensuremath{\kappa}\ensuremath{\propto}{T}^{2}$. At high temperature the Prandtl number, the ratio of the momentum and thermal diffusion constants, is 2/3. The ratio increases as the temperature is lowered. As a consequence we expect sound attenuation in the normal phase just above Tc{T}_{c}Tc​ to be dominated by shear viscosity. We comment on the possibility of extracting the shear viscosity of the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity using measurements of the sound absorption length.
This article follows up on arxiv:2511.15938, in which we developed an Hamiltonian renormalization scheme to construct a quantized theory of Fermi liquids. Here, we apply this formalism to a low-temperature atomic Fermi gas where the short-range interactions are fully parametrized by the s-wave scattering length aaa. We benchmark our renormalized theory by recovering known perturbative results on the static properties of the Fermi gas, such as the Lee-Huang-Yang expansion of the equation of state, the Galitskii expansion of the momentum distribution, and the Gor'kov-Melik Barkhudarov preexponential correction to the critical temperature. We then turn to the transport dynamics and demonstrate the presence of a preexponential correction to the speed of zero sound when including corrections of second order in aaa. Finally, we develop an efficient numerical method to solve the transport equation exactly, and we apply it to study the crossover from the collisionless to the hydrodynamic regime in the density and polarisation response functions.
A system of hydrodynamic equations has been obtained for superfluid Fermi systems with singlet pairing and nonzero momentum which are formed, e.g., in the case of small polarization of the spin system. As a result, the energy gap is a periodic function of the coordinates and a spin-density wave is formed. For such systems the complete set of dynamic variables includes both purely hydrodynamic (superfluid and normal) velocities and the displacement vector corresponding to the violations of the translational invariance. All of the tensors of normal and superfluid densities that appear in the system as well as the elastic moduli have been calculated. A dispersion relation has been obtained for thermal vibrations (second sound) and elastic vibrations, and this relation has turned out to be substantially anisotropic. Observation of the predicted effects is most probable in 3He–He II solutions in magnetic fields of the order of several kilooersteds at low temperatures.