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arXiv:1507.08535 · Physical Review A

Beliaev damping of the Goldstone mode in atomic Fermi superfluids

Giacomo Bighin, Luca Salasnich, P. A. Marchetti, Flavio Toigo

Published Aug 26, 2015• 17 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Beliaev damping in a superfluid is the decay of a collective excitation into two lower-frequency collective excitations; it represents the only decay mode for a bosonic collective excitation in a superfluid at $T=0$. The standard treatment for this decay assumes a linear spectrum, which in turn implies that the final-state momenta must be collinear to the initial state. We extend this treatment, showing that the inclusion of a gradient term in the Hamiltonian yields a realistic spectrum for the bosonic excitations; we then derive a formula for the decay rate of such excitations and show that even moderate nonlinearities in the spectrum can yield substantial deviations from the standard result. We apply our result to an attractive Fermi gas in the BCS--Bose-Einstein condensate crossover: Here the low-energy bosonic collective excitations are density oscillations driven by the phase of the pairing order field. These collective excitations, which are gapless modes as a consequence of the Goldstone mechanism, have a spectrum that is well established both theoretically and experimentally and whose linewidth, we show, is determined at low temperatures by the Beliaev decay mechanism.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.92.023638

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Beliaev damping in a superfluid is the decay of a collective excitation into two lower-frequency collective excitations; it represents the only decay mode for a bosonic collective excitation in a superfluid at T=0T=0T=0. The standard treatment for this decay assumes a linear spectrum, which in turn implies that the final-state momenta must be collinear to the initial state. We extend this treatment, showing that the inclusion of a gradient term in the Hamiltonian yields a realistic spectrum for the bosonic excitations; we then derive a formula for the decay rate of such excitations and show that even moderate nonlinearities in the spectrum can yield substantial deviations from the standard result. We apply our result to an attractive Fermi gas in the BCS--Bose-Einstein condensate crossover: Here the low-energy bosonic collective excitations are density oscillations driven by the phase of the pairing order field. These collective excitations, which are gapless modes as a consequence of the Goldstone mechanism, have a spectrum that is well established both theoretically and experimentally and whose linewidth, we show, is determined at low temperatures by the Beliaev decay mechanism.
Bragg spectroscopy shows the evolution of gapless Goldstone modes and single-particle-like excitations in an atomic Fermi superfluid as it crosses from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid to the Bose–Einstein condensate regime. Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a central paradigm of elementary particle physics1, magnetism2, superfluidity3 and superconductivity4. According to Goldstone’s theorem, phase transitions that break continuous symmetries lead to the existence of gapless excitations in the long-wavelength limit5. These Goldstone modes can become the dominant low-energy excitation, showing that symmetry breaking has a profound impact on the physical properties of matter. Here, we present a comprehensive study of the elementary excitations in a homogeneous strongly interacting Fermi gas through the crossover from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules using two-photon Bragg spectroscopy. The spectra exhibit a discrete Goldstone mode, associated with the broken-symmetry superfluid phase, as well as pair-breaking single-particle excitations. Our techniques yield a direct determination of the superfluid pairing gap and speed of sound in close agreement with strong-coupling theories.
With very few exceptions (such as the centre-of-mass dipole mode), collective oscillations in trapped superfluid Bose gases are damped. In the “collisionless” region the damping is second order in the interaction strength. There are three possible components. One is Beliaev damping, which is due to the decay of a single excitation into two excitations; this can occur even at T = 0. In addition, there is Landau damping, which is due to a collective mode scattering from thermally excited excitations. This process only occurs at finite temperatures but quickly becomes the dominant damping mechanism as the temperature increases. Both Landau and Beliaev damping arise naturally from the imaginary part of the Beliaev second-order self-energies, as given in (5.40) in the case of a uniform Bose gas. Finally there is the damping that arises from the C 22 and C 12 collision processes; this is discussed in Chapters 8, 12 and 19. In Chapter 12 we calculated the damping of various condensate modes at finite temperatures using direct numerical simulations of the ZNG equations. These numerical results were generally in very good agreement with the available experimental data. From a theoretical perspective, one advantage of the simulations is that the Landau damping contribution can be isolated simply by setting the C 12 and C 22 collision terms to zero. After providing an introduction to Landau damping in uniform Bose gases in Section 13.1, we present in Section 13.2 a detailed discussion of Landau damping based on a general formula in terms of Bogoliubov–Popov excitations. This discussion makes it clear that the Landau damping of condensate oscillations arises from the interaction with a thermal cloud of excitations.
Bose–Einstein condensation represents a quintessential manifestation of quantum mechanics at macroscopic scales, where a dilute gas of bosonic atoms undergoes a phase transition to form a coherent matter wave. This study presents a comprehensive theoretical investigation of collective excitations and critical phenomena in interacting Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs). Beginning with the Gross–Pitaevskii equation , we develop the Bogoliubov theory of excitations yielding the spectrum , where is the free-particle energy and characterizes contact interactions. The spectrum reveals phonon behavior at low momenta with sound velocity , transitioning to free-particle dispersion at momenta exceeding the inverse healing length . Collective modes in harmonically trapped condensates are analyzed in the Thomas–Fermi regime, yielding breathing mode frequency and quadrupole frequency . Damping mechanisms including Landau damping ( ) and Beliaev damping ( ) are characterized. The Lee–Huang–Yang correction extends the equation of state beyond mean field. Critical phenomena near are analyzed within the 3D XY universality class, with critical exponents , , and the interaction-induced shift with . All predictions show excellent agreement with experimental measurements on ultracold atomic gases.
Using an effective field theory we describe the low energy bosonic excitations in a three-dimensional ultracold mixture of spin-1 bosons and spin-1/2 fermions. We establish an interesting fermionic excitation induced generic damping of the usual undamped long-wavelength bosonic collective Goldstone modes. Two states with bosons forming either a ferromagnetic or polar superfluid are studied. The linear dispersion of the bosonic Bogoliubov excitations is preserved with a renormalized sound velocity. For the polar superfluid we find both gapless modes (density and spin) are damped, whereas in the ferromagnetic superfluid we find the density (spin) mode is (not) damped. We find that this holds for any mixture of bosons and fermions that are coupled through at least a density-density interaction. In addition, we predict the existence of the Kohn anomaly in the bosonic excitation spectrum of Bose-Fermi mixtures. We discuss the implications of our many-body interaction results for experiments on Bose-Fermi mixtures.
The low-energy modes of a superfluid atomic Fermi gas at zero temperature are investigated. The Bose-Einstein-condensate (BEC) side of the superfluid phase is studied in detail. The atoms are assumed to be in only one internal state, so that for a sufficiently diluted gas the pairing of fermions can be considered effective in the l=1 channel only. In agreement with previous works on p-wave superfluidity in Fermi systems, it is found that the px+ipyp_x+ip_ypx​+ipy​ phase represents the lowest energy state in both the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) and BEC sides. Our calculations show that at low energy three branches of collective modes can emerge, with different species of dispersion relations: a phonon-like mode, a single-particle-like mode and a gapped mode. A comparison with the Bogoliubov excitations of the corresponding spinor Bose condensate is made. They reproduce the dispersion relations of the excitation modes of the p-wave superfluid Fermi gas to a high accuracy.