For a long time, it has been thought that two-dimensional (2D) Fermi gases could support long-lived excitations, owing to the collinear quasiparticle scattering controlled by phase-space constraints at a 2D Fermi surface. We present a direct calculation that reveals such excitations. The excitation lifetimes are found to exceed the fundamental bound set by the Landau Fermi-liquid theory by a factor as large as ${({T}_{F}/T)}^{\ensuremath{\alpha}}$ with $\ensuremath{\alpha}\ensuremath{\approx}2$. These excitations represent Fermi-surface modulations of an odd parity, one per each odd angular momentum. To explain this surprising behavior, we employ a connection between the linearized quantum kinetic equation and the dynamics of a fictitious quantum particle moving in a 1D reflectionless
sech2 potential. In this framework, we identify the long-lived excitations in Fermi gases as zero modes that arise from supersymmetry.
Two-dimensional electron systems offer an appealing platform to explore long-lived excitations arising due to collinear carrier scattering enabled by phase-space constraints at the Fermi surface. Recently it was found that these effects can boost excitation lifetimes over the fundamental bound set by Landau’s Fermi-liquid theory by a factor as large as (TF/T)α with α≈2. Long-lived degrees of freedom possess the capability to amplify the response to weak perturbations, producing lasting collective memory effects. This leads to non-Newtonian hydrodynamics in 2D electron fluids driven by multiple viscous modes with scale-dependent viscosity. We describe these modes as Fermi surface modulations of odd parity evolving in space and time, and discuss their implications for experimental studies of electron hydrodynamics.
Clean two-dimensional Fermi liquids are now known to exhibit an intermediate \emph{tomographic} regime, between ballistic and Navier--Stokes transport, caused by the anomalously slow relaxation of parity-odd multipolar deformations of the Fermi surface. Here we show that this anomaly extends to the dynamical realm. Starting from a microscopic numerical evaluation of the linearized electron--electron collision operator, we find that the finite-frequency nonlocal conductivity is controlled at low frequency by a single hydrodynamic pole,
σ(q,ω)=D(q)/(iω+η⋆qz), with dynamical exponent
z=4/3 and superdiffusive viscosity
η⋆. Remarkably, the pole residue itself is scale dependent and obeys
D(q)∼q−α with
α=1/3, so the dynamical properties are described by two separate exponents rather than one. We interpret the residue suppression using a Krylov-chain description of current relaxation: as
q increases, the longest-lived quasinormal mode ceases to be a nearly pure current excitation and spreads over higher odd angular harmonics. Finally, we show that AC transport in narrow channels provides a direct experimental probe of these phenomena.
Fermi gases in two dimensions display collective dynamics originating from head-on collisions, a collinear carrier scattering process that dominates angular relaxation at not-too-high temperatures T≪T_{F}. In this regime, a large family of excitations emerges, with an odd-parity angular structure of momentum distribution and exceptionally long lifetimes. This leads to "tomographic" dynamics: fast 1D spatial diffusion along the unchanging velocity direction accompanied by a slow angular dynamics that gradually randomizes velocity orientation. The tomographic regime features an unusual hierarchy of timescales and scale-dependent transport coefficients with nontrivial fractional scaling dimensions, leading to fractional-power current flow profiles and unusual conductance scaling versus sample width.
A hallmark of electron hydrodynamics---a transport regime dominated by electron collisions---is that collisions enhance conduction and reduce dissipation, causing resistance to drop and conductance to rise with temperature (
T). Here, the authors present a microscopic study of two-dimensional electron fluids, predicting linear-in-
T scaling of hydrodynamic conductance. This behavior, contrasting with the
T2 scaling in three-dimensional Fermi liquids, arises from a cascade of multiple long-lived viscous modes unique to two-dimensional systems. The number of modes relevant for transport grows as
T decreases, resulting in a non-Fermi-liquid linear-in-
T behavior.
We introduce and analyze a metallic phase of two-dimensional
(2D) electrons, the roton Fermi liquid (RFL), which, in contrast to the Landau--Fermi liquid, supports both gapless fermionic and bosonic quasiparticle excitations. The RFL is accessed using a reformulation of
2D electrons consisting of fermionic quasiparticles and
hc∕2e vortices interacting with a mutual long-ranged statistical interaction. In the presence of a strong vortex-antivortex (i.e., roton) hopping term, the RFL phase emerges as an exotic yet eminently tractable quantum ground state. The RFL phase exhibits a ``Bose surface'' of gapless roton excitations describing transverse current fluctuations, has off-diagonal quasi-long-ranged order at zero temperature
(T=0), but is not superconducting, having zero superfluid density and no Meissner effect. The electrical resistance vanishes as $T\ensuremath{\rightarrow}0$ with a power of temperature (and frequency), $R(T)\ensuremath{\sim}{T}^{\ensuremath{\gamma}}$ (with $\ensuremath{\gamma}>1$), independent of the impurity concentration. The RFL phase also has a full Fermi surface of quasiparticle excitations just as in a Landau--Fermi liquid. Electrons can, however, scatter anomalously from rotonic ``current fluctuations'' and ``superconducting fluctuations.'' Current fluctuations induced by the gapless rotons scatter anomalously only at ``hot spots'' on the Fermi surface (with tangents parallel to the crystalline axes), while superconducting fluctuations give rise to an anomalous lifetime over the entire Fermi surface except near the (incipient) nodal points (``cold spots''). Fermionic quasiparticles dominate the Hall electrical transport. We also find three dominant instabilities of the RFL phase: an instability to a conventional Fermi-liquid phase driven by vortex condensation, a BCS-type instability toward fermion pairing, and a (nonpairing) superconducting instability. Precisely at the instability into the Fermi-liquid state, the exponent $\ensuremath{\gamma}$ saturates the bound, $\ensuremath{\gamma}=1$, so that $R(T)\ensuremath{\sim}T$. Upon entering the superconducting state the rotons are gapped out, and the anomalous quasiparticle scattering is strongly suppressed. We discuss how the RFL phase might underlie the strange metallic state of the cuprates near optimal doping, and outline a phenomenological picture to accommodate the underdoped pseudogap regime and the overdoped Landau--Fermi-liquid phase.