Superfluidity in Fermi systems is not destroyed by a flow exceeding the Landau velocity threshold. The overcritical state acquires a normal component even at zero temperature. We explore the peculiar hydrodynamics of this system and discover two sound modes, for which the explicit universal dispersion relations are provided.
Superfluidity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon, which shows up below a critical temperature and leads to a peculiar behavior of matter, with frictionless flow, the formation of quantized vortices, and the quenching of the moment of inertia being intriguing examples. A remarkable explanation for many phenomena exhibited by a superfluid at finite temperature can be given in terms of a two-fluid mixture comprised of a normal component that behaves like a usual fluid and a superfluid component with zero viscosity and zero entropy. Important examples of superfluid systems are liquid helium and neutron stars. More recently, ultracold atomic gases have emerged as new superfluid systems with unprecedented possibilities to control interactions and external confinement. Here we report the first observation of `second sound' in an ultracold Fermi gas with resonant interactions. Second sound is a striking manifestation of the two-component nature of a superfluid and corresponds to an entropy wave, where the superfluid and the non-superfluid components oscillate in opposite phase, different from ordinary sound (`first sound'), where they oscillate in phase. The speed of second sound depends explicitly on the value of the superfluid fraction, a quantity sensitive to the spectrum of elementary excitations. Our measurements allow us to extract the temperature dependence of the superfluid fraction, which in strongly interacting quantum gases has been an inaccessible quantity so far.
We use kinetic-theory methods to analyze Landau Fermi-liquid theory, and in particular to investigate the number and nature of modes in Fermi liquids that are soft in the long-wavelength limit, both in the hydrodynamic and the collisionless regimes. In the hydrodynamic regime we show that Fermi-liquid theory is consistent with Navier-Stokes hydrodynamics at all temperatures, as expected. The soft modes are the ones familiar from classical hydrodynamics that are controlled by the five conservation laws; namely, two first-sound modes, two shear diffusion modes, and one heat diffusion mode. These modes have a particle-like spectrum and are soft, or scale invariant, at all temperatures. In the collisionless regime we show that the entire single-particle distribution function is soft with a continuous part of the spectrum. This continuous soft mode, which is well known but often not emphasized, has important physical consequences, e.g., for certain quantum phase transitions. In addition, there are the well-known soft zero-sound excitations that describe angular fluctuations of the Fermi surface; their spectra are particle-like. They are unrelated to conservation laws, acquire a mass at any nonzero temperature, and their number depends on the strength of the quasiparticle interaction. We also discuss the fates of these two families of soft modes as the temperature changes. With increasing temperature the size of the collisionless regime shrinks, the damping of the modes grows, and eventually all of the collisionless modes become overdamped. In their stead the five hydrodynamic modes appear in the hydrodynamic regime at asymptotically low frequencies. The two families of soft modes are unrelated and have very different physical origins. In charged Fermi liquids the first-sound modes in the hydrodynamic regime and the $\ensuremath{\ell}=0$ zero-sound modes in the collisionless regime get replaced by plasmons, all other modes remain soft.
Abstract This chapter presents a general discussion of the phenomenon of superfluidity, starting from the famous Landau criterion for the critical velocity. The Landau expression for the normal (non-superfluid) component of the gas, expressed in terms of the elementary excitations of the system, is derived. The relationship between Bose–Einstein condensation and the phenomenon of superfluidity is outlined, with special focus on the role played by the phase of the order parameter, whose gradient fixes the velocity of the superfluid. The chapter derives the hydrodynamic equations of superfluids at both zero and finite temperatures and discuss the solutions for first and second sound. The formalism of quantum hydrodynamics is presented, with an application to the Beliaev decay of phonons and to the calculation of the fluctuations of the phase. It also discusses the consequences for superfluidity on the rotational properties and the spatial structure of vortex lines.
We study the sound modes of a Bose–Fermi mixture superfluid at finite temperatures in the collisional hydrodynamic regime. We extend Landau’s hydrodynamic theory to deal with a Bose–Fermi mixture superfluid and show the existence of three sound modes. We calculate the hydrodynamic sound velocities numerically using the Nozières and Schmitt-Rink theory at unitarity. The three-sound-modes hybrid in Bose–Fermi mixture superfluids contrasts with the two sound modes exhibited by 3He and 4He superfluids.
In this paper, collective excitations in a homogeneous fermion-fermion mixture with different Fermi surfaces are studied. In the Fermi liquid phase, the zero-sound velocity is found to be larger than the largest Fermi velocity. With attractive interactions, the superfluid phase appears below a critical temperature, and the phase mode is the low-energy collective excitation. The velocity of the phase mode is significantly different from the zero-sound velocity. The difference between the two velocities may serve as a tool to detect the superfluid phase.