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:2603.15737

AC Fingerprints of 2D Electron Hydrodynamics: Superdiffusion and Drude Weight Suppression

Davis Thuillier, Thomas Scaffidi

Published Mar 16, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

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, $σ(q,ω)=\mathcal{D}(q)/(iω+η_\star q^z)$, with dynamical exponent $z=4/3$ and superdiffusive viscosity $η_\star$. Remarkably, the pole residue itself is scale dependent and obeys $\mathcal{D}(q)\sim q^{-α}$ 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.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2603.15737

Related papers

Magnetic field suppression of tomographic electron transport

Habib Rostami, Nitay Ben-Shachar, Sergej Moroz +1 more

Degenerate two-dimensional electron liquids are theoretically established to possess two vastly distinct collisional electron mean free paths, where even-parity deformations of the Fermi surface are hydrodynamic with a short collisional mean free path but odd-parity deformations remain near ballistic (known as the “tomographic” transport regime). Predicted signatures of this regime rely on the scaling of observables with temperature or device dimension, both of which are difficult to establish with certainty. Here, we consider magnetotransport in a minimal model of tomographic electrons and show that even a small magnetic field suppresses tomographic transport signatures and thus acts as a sensitive and unique probe of this regime. Fundamentally, the magnetic field breaks time-reversal invariance, which is a prerequisite for the odd-even parity effect in the collisional relaxation. We analyze in detail the scaling of the transverse conductivity, which has been linked to small-channel conductance of interaction-dominated electrons, and show that a tomographic scaling regime at intermediate wave numbers is quickly suppressed with magnetic field to a hydrodynamic or collisionless form. We confirm that the suppression occurs at relatively small magnetic fields when the cyclotron radius is comparable to the ballistic mean free path of the dominant odd-parity mode. This occurs at a much smaller magnetic field than the magnetic field strength required to suppress hydrodynamic electron transport, which suggests an experimental protocol to extract the odd-parity mean free path.

arXiv:2411.08102•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Apr 22, 2025•8 citations

Quantum Critical Ballistic Transport in Two-Dimensional Fermi Liquids

Mani Chandra, Gitansh Kataria, Deshdeep Sahdev

Electronic transport in Fermi liquids is usually Ohmic, because of momentum-relaxing scattering due to defects and phonons. These processes can become sufficiently weak in two-dimensional materials, giving rise to either ballistic or hydrodynamic transport, depending on the strength of electron-electron scattering. We show that the ballistic regime is a quantum critical point (QCP) on the regime boundary separating Ohmic and hydrodynamic transport. The QCP corresponds to a \emph{free} conformal field theory (CFT) with a dynamical scaling exponent $z = 1$. Its nontrivial aspects emerge in device geometries with shear, wherein the regime has an intrinsic universal dissipation, a nonlocal current-voltage relation, and exhibits the critical scaling of the underlying CFT. The Fermi surface has electron-hole pockets across all angular scales and the current flow has \emph{vortices} at all spatial scales. We image the fluctuations in high-definition and animate their emergence as experimental parameters are tuned to the QCP (movie links in comments). The vortices clearly demonstrate that Pauli exclusion alone can produce collective effects, with low-frequency AC transport mediated by vortex dynamics. The scale-invariant spatial structure is much richer than that of an interaction-dominated hydrodynamic regime, which only has a single vortex at the device scale. Our findings provide a theoretical framework for both interaction-free and interaction-dominated non-Ohmic transport in two-dimensional materials, as seen in several contemporary experiments.

arXiv:1910.13737•Bulletin of the American Physical Society•Oct 30, 2019•0 citations

Odd-parity effect and scale-dependent viscosity in atomic quantum gases

Jeff Maki, Ulf Gran, Johannes Hofmann

Abstract Two-dimensional electron gases are predicted to possess an anomalous “tomographic” transport regime that is marked by an odd-even effect in the relaxation times, with odd-parity deformations of the Fermi surface becoming long-lived in comparison to even-parity ones. In this work, we establish that neutral two-component atomic Fermi gases also exhibit this tomographic effect. By diagonalizing the Fermi liquid collision integral, we identify odd-parity modes with anomalously long lifetimes below temperatures T≤0.15T F , which is within reach of cold atom experiments. Furthermore, in contrast to electron gases, we find that the odd-even effect in neutral gases is widely tuneable with interactions along the BCS-BEC crossover and is suppressed on the BEC side. We propose as an experimental signature of the odd-even effect the damping rate of quadrupole oscillations, which is anomalously enhanced due to the presence of long-lived odd-parity modes. Our findings suggest that the dynamics of two-dimensional Fermi gases is richer than previously thought and should include additional long-lived modes.

arXiv:2408.02738•Communications Physics•Aug 6, 2025•4 citations

Tomographic collective modes in a magnetic field

Jeff Maki, Johannes Hofmann

Two-dimensional Fermi liquids at low temperatures have been theoretically established to exhibit an odd-even effect in the collective quasiparticle relaxation rates where even-parity deformations of the Fermi surface decay at a much faster rate than odd-parity ones. A predicted consequence of this effect is a new tomographic transport regime that mixes hydrodynamic and collisionless transport. In the presence of a magnetic field, however, the tomographic regime is expected to evolve towards conventional transport regimes as soon as the cyclotron radius becomes smaller than the dominant odd-parity mean-free path. In this work, we examine this transition from the point of view of collective modes, using a numerically exact solution of the linearized Boltzmann equation within a generalized relaxation time approximation for the odd-parity and even-parity modes. In the absence of a magnetic field, the transverse conductivity exhibits two diffusive tomographic collective modes, and we find that at a critical magnetic field one of these two tomographic modes disappears. Which tomographic mode persists depends on the Landau parameters, and becomes increasingly dominated by hydrodynamic modes at high fields. We corroborate our analysis using a variational approach for the Fermi surface deformation that captures the angular structure of the deformation and the critical magnetic field strength. The collective modes discussed here can in principle be observed by examining the damping of longitudinal and transverse current responses in finite magnetic fields.

arXiv:2603.06518•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•May 8, 2026•0 citations

Anomalously long lifetimes in two-dimensional Fermi liquids

Johannes Hofmann, Ulf Gran

A precise characterization of the recently discovered crossover to hydrodynamic transport in electron liquids, and in particular of a conjectured exotic odd-parity transport regime, requires a full solution of the Fermi-liquid collision integral at all temperatures beyond state-of-the-art analytic leading-logarithmic approximations. We develop a general basis expansion of the linearized collision integral applicable at all temperatures, and employ this to determine the decay rates of Fermi surface perturbations in two-dimensional electron liquids. In particular, we provide exhaustive data on the decay rates for a new odd-parity regime, in which parity-even Fermi surface deformations decay rapidly but odd-parity modes are anomalously longlived. We find that this transport regime exists at fairly large temperatures $T\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.1\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{T}_{F}$, putting this regime within the reach of current experiments.

arXiv:2210.16300•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Sep 5, 2023•25 citations

Collective modes in interacting two-dimensional tomographic Fermi liquids

Johannes Hofmann, S. Das Sarma

We develop an analytically solvable model for interacting two-dimensional Fermi liquids with separate collisional relaxation rates for parity-odd and parity-even Fermi surface deformations. Such a disparity of collisional lifetimes exists whenever scattering is restricted to inversion-symmetric Fermi surfaces, and should thus be a generic feature of two-dimensional Fermi liquids. It implies an additional unanticipated ``tomographic'' transport regime (in between the standard collisionless and hydrodynamic regimes) in which even-parity modes are overdamped while odd-parity modes are collisionless. We derive expressions for both the longitudinal and the transverse conductivity and discuss the collective mode spectrum along the collisionless-tomographic-hydrodynamic crossover. Longitudinal modes cross over from zero sound in the collisionless regime to hydrodynamic first sound in the tomographic and hydrodynamic regime, where odd-parity damping appears as a subleading correction to the lifetime. In charged Fermi liquids with long-range Coulomb coupling, these modes reduce to plasmons with a strongly suppressed odd-parity correction to the damping. The transverse response, by contrast, has a specific tomographic transport regime with two imaginary odd-parity modes, one of which requires a finite repulsive interaction, distinct from both the shear sound in the collisionless regime and an overdamped diffusive current mode in the hydrodynamic limit. Our work demonstrates that there are deep many-body aspects of interacting Fermi liquids, which are often thought to be well understood theoretically, remaining unexplored.

arXiv:2208.13797•Physical review. B./Physical review. B•Nov 22, 2022•30 citations
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)σ(q,ω)=\mathcal{D}(q)/(iω+η_\star q^z)σ(q,ω)=D(q)/(iω+η⋆​qz), with dynamical exponent z=4/3z=4/3z=4/3 and superdiffusive viscosity η⋆η_\starη⋆​. Remarkably, the pole residue itself is scale dependent and obeys D(q)∼q−α\mathcal{D}(q)\sim q^{-α}D(q)∼q−α with α=1/3α=1/3α=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 qqq 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.
Degenerate two-dimensional electron liquids are theoretically established to possess two vastly distinct collisional electron mean free paths, where even-parity deformations of the Fermi surface are hydrodynamic with a short collisional mean free path but odd-parity deformations remain near ballistic (known as the “tomographic” transport regime). Predicted signatures of this regime rely on the scaling of observables with temperature or device dimension, both of which are difficult to establish with certainty. Here, we consider magnetotransport in a minimal model of tomographic electrons and show that even a small magnetic field suppresses tomographic transport signatures and thus acts as a sensitive and unique probe of this regime. Fundamentally, the magnetic field breaks time-reversal invariance, which is a prerequisite for the odd-even parity effect in the collisional relaxation. We analyze in detail the scaling of the transverse conductivity, which has been linked to small-channel conductance of interaction-dominated electrons, and show that a tomographic scaling regime at intermediate wave numbers is quickly suppressed with magnetic field to a hydrodynamic or collisionless form. We confirm that the suppression occurs at relatively small magnetic fields when the cyclotron radius is comparable to the ballistic mean free path of the dominant odd-parity mode. This occurs at a much smaller magnetic field than the magnetic field strength required to suppress hydrodynamic electron transport, which suggests an experimental protocol to extract the odd-parity mean free path.
Electronic transport in Fermi liquids is usually Ohmic, because of momentum-relaxing scattering due to defects and phonons. These processes can become sufficiently weak in two-dimensional materials, giving rise to either ballistic or hydrodynamic transport, depending on the strength of electron-electron scattering. We show that the ballistic regime is a quantum critical point (QCP) on the regime boundary separating Ohmic and hydrodynamic transport. The QCP corresponds to a \emph{free} conformal field theory (CFT) with a dynamical scaling exponent z=1z = 1z=1. Its nontrivial aspects emerge in device geometries with shear, wherein the regime has an intrinsic universal dissipation, a nonlocal current-voltage relation, and exhibits the critical scaling of the underlying CFT. The Fermi surface has electron-hole pockets across all angular scales and the current flow has \emph{vortices} at all spatial scales. We image the fluctuations in high-definition and animate their emergence as experimental parameters are tuned to the QCP (movie links in comments). The vortices clearly demonstrate that Pauli exclusion alone can produce collective effects, with low-frequency AC transport mediated by vortex dynamics. The scale-invariant spatial structure is much richer than that of an interaction-dominated hydrodynamic regime, which only has a single vortex at the device scale. Our findings provide a theoretical framework for both interaction-free and interaction-dominated non-Ohmic transport in two-dimensional materials, as seen in several contemporary experiments.
Abstract Two-dimensional electron gases are predicted to possess an anomalous “tomographic” transport regime that is marked by an odd-even effect in the relaxation times, with odd-parity deformations of the Fermi surface becoming long-lived in comparison to even-parity ones. In this work, we establish that neutral two-component atomic Fermi gases also exhibit this tomographic effect. By diagonalizing the Fermi liquid collision integral, we identify odd-parity modes with anomalously long lifetimes below temperatures T≤0.15T F , which is within reach of cold atom experiments. Furthermore, in contrast to electron gases, we find that the odd-even effect in neutral gases is widely tuneable with interactions along the BCS-BEC crossover and is suppressed on the BEC side. We propose as an experimental signature of the odd-even effect the damping rate of quadrupole oscillations, which is anomalously enhanced due to the presence of long-lived odd-parity modes. Our findings suggest that the dynamics of two-dimensional Fermi gases is richer than previously thought and should include additional long-lived modes.
Two-dimensional Fermi liquids at low temperatures have been theoretically established to exhibit an odd-even effect in the collective quasiparticle relaxation rates where even-parity deformations of the Fermi surface decay at a much faster rate than odd-parity ones. A predicted consequence of this effect is a new tomographic transport regime that mixes hydrodynamic and collisionless transport. In the presence of a magnetic field, however, the tomographic regime is expected to evolve towards conventional transport regimes as soon as the cyclotron radius becomes smaller than the dominant odd-parity mean-free path. In this work, we examine this transition from the point of view of collective modes, using a numerically exact solution of the linearized Boltzmann equation within a generalized relaxation time approximation for the odd-parity and even-parity modes. In the absence of a magnetic field, the transverse conductivity exhibits two diffusive tomographic collective modes, and we find that at a critical magnetic field one of these two tomographic modes disappears. Which tomographic mode persists depends on the Landau parameters, and becomes increasingly dominated by hydrodynamic modes at high fields. We corroborate our analysis using a variational approach for the Fermi surface deformation that captures the angular structure of the deformation and the critical magnetic field strength. The collective modes discussed here can in principle be observed by examining the damping of longitudinal and transverse current responses in finite magnetic fields.
A precise characterization of the recently discovered crossover to hydrodynamic transport in electron liquids, and in particular of a conjectured exotic odd-parity transport regime, requires a full solution of the Fermi-liquid collision integral at all temperatures beyond state-of-the-art analytic leading-logarithmic approximations. We develop a general basis expansion of the linearized collision integral applicable at all temperatures, and employ this to determine the decay rates of Fermi surface perturbations in two-dimensional electron liquids. In particular, we provide exhaustive data on the decay rates for a new odd-parity regime, in which parity-even Fermi surface deformations decay rapidly but odd-parity modes are anomalously longlived. We find that this transport regime exists at fairly large temperatures $T\ensuremath{\lesssim}0.1\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}{T}_{F}$, putting this regime within the reach of current experiments.
We develop an analytically solvable model for interacting two-dimensional Fermi liquids with separate collisional relaxation rates for parity-odd and parity-even Fermi surface deformations. Such a disparity of collisional lifetimes exists whenever scattering is restricted to inversion-symmetric Fermi surfaces, and should thus be a generic feature of two-dimensional Fermi liquids. It implies an additional unanticipated ``tomographic'' transport regime (in between the standard collisionless and hydrodynamic regimes) in which even-parity modes are overdamped while odd-parity modes are collisionless. We derive expressions for both the longitudinal and the transverse conductivity and discuss the collective mode spectrum along the collisionless-tomographic-hydrodynamic crossover. Longitudinal modes cross over from zero sound in the collisionless regime to hydrodynamic first sound in the tomographic and hydrodynamic regime, where odd-parity damping appears as a subleading correction to the lifetime. In charged Fermi liquids with long-range Coulomb coupling, these modes reduce to plasmons with a strongly suppressed odd-parity correction to the damping. The transverse response, by contrast, has a specific tomographic transport regime with two imaginary odd-parity modes, one of which requires a finite repulsive interaction, distinct from both the shear sound in the collisionless regime and an overdamped diffusive current mode in the hydrodynamic limit. Our work demonstrates that there are deep many-body aspects of interacting Fermi liquids, which are often thought to be well understood theoretically, remaining unexplored.