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arXiv:1008.0423 · Physical Review Letters

Microscopic Approach to Shear Viscosities of Unitary Fermi Gases above and below the Superfluid Transition

Hao Guo, Dan Wulin, Chih-Chun Chien, Kathryn Levin

Published Jul 6, 2011• 34 citations
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Abstract

Recent experiments on the shear viscosity η in a unitary Fermi gas fail to see the theoretically predicted upturn in η at the lower T. In this Letter, we compute η in a fashion which is demonstrably consistent with conservation laws and, in the process, provide an understanding of recent experiments. We show that this disagreement with prior theories cannot be readily attributed to the trap, since (via edge effects) trap-averaged viscosities will be larger than their homogeneous counterparts. The small values of η we find can be simply understood; they reflect the fact that the Goldstone bosons (phonons) do not couple to transverse probes such as η, and fermionic excitations, which determine the viscosity, are necessarily absent in the ground state.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.107.020403

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Recent experiments on the shear viscosity η in a unitary Fermi gas fail to see the theoretically predicted upturn in η at the lower T. In this Letter, we compute η in a fashion which is demonstrably consistent with conservation laws and, in the process, provide an understanding of recent experiments. We show that this disagreement with prior theories cannot be readily attributed to the trap, since (via edge effects) trap-averaged viscosities will be larger than their homogeneous counterparts. The small values of η we find can be simply understood; they reflect the fact that the Goldstone bosons (phonons) do not couple to transverse probes such as η, and fermionic excitations, which determine the viscosity, are necessarily absent in the ground state.
We analyze the contributions of Nambu-Goldstone modes to the shear viscosity of a superfluid atomic Fermi gas close to unitarity. We show that the low temperature experimental values of the shear viscosity to entropy ratio, η/sη/sη/s, are reproduced considering an effective shear viscosity which takes into account the collisions among Nambu-Goldstone bosons and the finite size of the optical trap. We predict that, for T≲0.1TFT \lesssim 0.1 T_FT≲0.1TF​, η/sη/sη/s should correlate with the size of the trap and linearly decrease with decreasing temperature. For T≳0.1TFT \gtrsim 0.1 T_FT≳0.1TF​, we find agreement with the experimental data assuming that the Nambu-Goldstone modes have an anomalous dispersion law.
We measure the shear viscosity for a resonantly interacting Fermi gas as a function of temperature from nearly the ground state through the superfluid phase transition into the high temperature regime. Further, we demonstrate an iterative method to estimate the local shear viscosity coefficient α(S)(θ) versus reduced temperature θ from the cloud-averaged measurements ⟨α(S)⟩, and compare α(S) to several microscopic theories. We find that α(S) reveals features that were previously hidden in ⟨α(S)⟩.
We determine the shear viscosity of the ultracold Fermi gas at unitarity in the normal phase using hydrodynamic expansion data. The analysis is based on a generalized fluid dynamic framework which ensures a smooth transition between the fluid dynamic core of the cloud and the ballistic corona. We use expansion data taken by Joseph, Elliott, and Thomas [Shear Viscosity of a Universal Fermi Gas Near the Superfluid Phase Transition, Phys. Rev. Lett. 115, 020401 (2015).PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.115.020401] and measurements of the equation of state by Ku et al. [Revealing the superfluid lambda transition in the universal thermodynamics of a unitary Fermi gas, Science 335, 563 (2012).SCIEAS0036-807510.1126/science.1214987]. We find that the shear viscosity to particle density ratio just above the critical temperature is η/n|_{T_{c}}=0.41±0.11. We also obtain evidence that the shear viscosity to entropy density ratio has a minimum slightly above T_{c} with η/s|_{min}=0.50±0.10.
We compute the shear viscosity of the unitary Fermi gas above the superfluid transition temperature, using a diagrammatic technique that starts from the exact Kubo formula. The formalism obeys a Ward identity associated with scale invariance which guarantees that the bulk viscosity vanishes identically. For the shear viscosity, vertex corrections and the associated Aslamazov-Larkin contributions are shown to be crucial to reproduce the full Boltzmann equation result in the high-temperature, low fugacity limit. The frequency dependent shear viscosity η(ω)\eta(\omega)η(ω) exhibits a Drude-like transport peak and a power-law tail at large frequencies which is proportional to the Tan contact. The weight in the transport peak is given by the equilibrium pressure, in agreement with a sum rule due to Taylor and Randeria. Near the superfluid transition the peak width is of the order of 0.5TF0.5 T_F0.5TF​, thus invalidating a quasiparticle description. The ratio η/s\eta/sη/s between the static shear viscosity and the entropy density exhibits a minimum near the superfluid transition temperature whose value is larger than the string theory bound ℏ/(4πkB)\hbar/(4\pi k_B)ℏ/(4πkB​) by a factor of about seven.
Abstract. In this contribution we summarize recent progress in understanding the shear viscosity of strongly correlated dilute Fermi gases. We discuss predictions from kinetic theory, and show how these predictions can be tested using recent experimental data on elliptic flow. We find agreement between theory and experiments in the high temperature regime T TF, where TF is the the temperature where quantum degeneracy effects become important. In the low temperature regime, T ∼ TF, the strongest constraints on the shear viscosity come from experimental studies of the damping of collective modes. These experiments indicate that η/s ∼< 0.5h̄/kB, where η is the shear viscosity and s is the entropy density.
We present a proposal to measure anisotropic shear viscosity in a strongly interacting, ultra-cold, unitary Fermi gas confined in a harmonic trap. We introduce anisotropy in this setup by strongly confining the gas in one of the directions with relatively weak confinement in the remaining directions. This system has a close resemblance to anisotropic strongly coupled field theories studied recently in the context of gauge-gravity duality. Computations in such theories (which have gravity duals) revealed that some of the viscosity components of the anisotropic shear viscosity tensor can be made much smaller than the entropy density, thus parametrically violating the bound proposed by Kovtun, Son and Starinets (KSS): ηs≥14π\frac η {s} \geq \frac{1}{4 π}sη​≥4π1​. A Boltzmann analysis performed in a system of weakly interacting particles in a linear potential also shows that components of the viscosity tensor can be reduced. Motivated by these exciting results, we propose two hydrodynamic modes in the unitary Fermi gas whose damping is governed by the component of shear viscosity expected to violate the KSS bound. One of these modes is the well known scissor mode. We estimate trap parameters for which the reduction in the shear viscosity is of order unity and find that the trap geometry, the damping timescales, and mode amplitudes are within the range of existing experimental setups on ultra-cold Fermi gases.