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:2606.01235

Interplay between Quantum Metric and Hybridized Collective Mode in Flat-Band Superfluids

Yi Liu, M. Wang, Penghui Hu, Yao Lu

Published May 31, 2026• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We investigate collective excitations in flat-band superfluids by incorporating the coupled dynamics of pairing (phase and amplitude) and density fluctuations. We demonstrate that for any time-reversal symmetric superfluid system with an isolated flat band, only a single low-energy collective mode emerges in the long-wavelength limit. In contrast to the linearly dispersive Goldstone mode in conventional superfluids, this hybridized mode is gapless at zero momentum but exhibits a quadratic dispersion ($ω\propto q^2$) at small momenta. We show that the dispersion coefficients of this collective mode are governed by the normal-state quantum metric of the flat band. These analytical predictions are in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. Our results are applicable to any generic $s$-wave flat-band superfluid, provided the flat band is energetically well separated from other dispersive bands.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.2606.01235

Related papers

Collective excitations of a BCS superfluid in the presence of two sublattices

M. Iskin

We consider a generic Hamiltonian that is suitable for describing a uniform BCS superfluid on a lattice with a two-point basis and study its collective excitations at zero temperature. For this purpose, we first derive a Gaussian effective action for the pairing fluctuations and then extract the low-energy dispersion relations for the in-phase Goldstone and out-of-phase Leggett modes along with the corresponding amplitude (i.e., the so-called Higgs) ones. We find that while the Goldstone mode is gapless at zero momentum and propagating in general, the Leggett mode becomes undamped only with sufficiently strong interactions. Furthermore, we show that, in addition to the conventional contribution that is controlled by the energy of the Bloch bands, the velocity of the Goldstone mode has a geometric contribution that is governed by the quantum metric tensor of the Bloch states. Our results suggest that the latter contribution dominates the velocity when the former becomes negligible for a narrowband or a flatband.

arXiv:2001.00198•Physical Review A•May 26, 2020•12 citations

Competition between pair and single-particle superfluidity in bosonic quasi-flat bands: A Gaussian state approach

Maxime Burgher, Simon Loddo, Laurens Vanderstraeten +2 more

The interplay between interactions and quantum geometry can drive weakly dispersive bosons into different exotic many-body phases. In this work we study a quasi flat-band model in one dimension that exhibits an extended pair-superfluid phase in the all-flat-band limit. Introducing single-particle hopping leads to an intriguing competition with a more conventional single-particle superfluid: we find that the pair superfluid remains stable for a finite range of the hopping strength until the system eventually transitions into the conventional superfluid phase. In our study, we make use of a variational Gaussian state approach that provides a unified description of the single-particle and pair superfluid phases, regarding both the ground state wavefunction and the collective excitation spectrum. In particular, we derive a general relation between the speed of sound and a ``quantum geometric kernel'', thereby extending earlier connections to the quantum metric, which relied on single-particle mean-field theory. This approach is combined with insights from the two-boson problem and exact diagonalization to map out the full phase diagram of the model. Our results show that the Gaussian approach is a versatile tool for studying a broad range of superfluid phases of interacting bosons in multi-orbital lattices.

arXiv:2605.26231•May 25, 2026•0 citations

Many-body superconductivity in topological flat bands

Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman, Aaron Chew, Kukka-Emilia Huhtinen +2 more

In a flat band superconductor, bosonic excitations disperse while unpaired electrons are immobile. To study this strongly interacting system, we construct a family of multi-band Hubbard models with exact eta-pairing ground states in all space groups. We analytically compute their many-body excitations and find that the Cooper pair bound states obey an effective single-boson hopping Hamiltonian written in terms of the non-interacting wavefunctions. These bound states possess a unique zero-energy excitation whose quadratic dispersion is determined by the minimal quantum metric. The rest of the bound state spectrum is classified by topological quantum chemistry, which we use to identify Cooper pairs with Weyl nodes, higher angular momentum pairing, and fragile topology. Broadening the band dispersion, we find the strongest pairing occurs at half filling and not at the highest density of states. Our analytical results prove that the elementary fermionic and bosonic excitations, corresponding respectively to pairing and coherence, are governed by distinct properties of the flat band, rigorously establishing its unique phenomenology. Superconductivity in flat bands is a central feature of quantum geometric effects, supported by mean-field theory and numerics. Here, the authors exhibit a large family of flat band Hubbard models whose ground states, Bogoliubov-de-Gennes particles, and Cooper pairs are exactly solvable with analytically calculable dispersions.

arXiv:2209.00007•Communications Physics•Jul 4, 2026•9 citations

BCS-BEC crossover of collective excitations in two-band superfluids

M. Iskin, C. A. R. Sá de Melo

We use the functional integral approach to study low energy collective excitations in a continuum model of neutral two-band superfluids at $T=0$ for all couplings with a separable pairing interaction. In the long wavelength and low frequency limit, we recover Leggett's analytical results in weak coupling (BCS) for $s$-wave pairing, and further obtain analytical results in strong coupling Bose-Einstein condensation for both two and three dimensional systems. We also analyze numerically the behavior of the out-of-phase exciton (finite frequency) mode and the in-phase phonon (Goldstone) mode from weak to strong coupling limits, including the crossover region. In principle, the evolution of Goldstone and finite frequency modes from weak to strong coupling may be accessible experimentally in the superfluid phase of neutral Fermi atomic gases, and could serve as a test of the validity of the theoretical analysis and approximations proposed here.

arXiv:cond-mat/0408586•Physical Review B•Jul 11, 2005•40 citations

Origin of flat-band superfluidity on the Mielke checkerboard lattice

M. Iskin

The Mielke checkerboard is known to be one of the simplest two-band lattice models exhibiting an energetically flat band that is in touch with a quadratically dispersive band in the reciprocal space, i.e., its flat band is not isolated. Motivated by the growing interest in understanding the origins of flat-band superfluidity in various contexts, here we provide an in-depth analysis showing how the mean-field BCS correlations prevail in this particular model. Our work reveals the quantum-geometric origin of flat-band superfluidity through uncovering the leading role by a band-structure invariant, i.e., the so-called quantum metric tensor of the single-particle bands, in the inverse effective mass tensor of the Cooper pairs.

arXiv:1902.10897•Physical Review A•May 13, 2019•33 citations

Quantum geometry of collective pairing fluctuations in the superfluid weight of multiband superconductors

R. N. Kalkan, M. Iskin

Beyond the frozen-pairing contribution, the superfluid weight of a multiband superconductor contains a correction from the self-consistent relaxation of the pairing amplitudes under a phase twist. We show that this correction has a quantum-geometric origin, not in the space of Bloch states but in the space of collective pairing fields. For an attractive multiband Hubbard model at the mean-field level, the thermodynamic Hessian governing the pairing response coincides with the static Gaussian pair-fluctuation kernel at zero momentum at every temperature below $T_c$. Since gauge invariance relates a phase twist to a finite center-of-mass momentum of the pair field, the superfluid weight is set by the small-momentum curvature of the eigenvalue branch that evolves from the Goldstone mode, and the relaxation correction is a stiffness-weighted quantum metric of the corresponding soft eigenvector on the manifold of pairing configurations. The same construction yields the Ginzburg-Landau gradient coefficient with the identical geometric correction, hence the coherence-length tensor, and, with the low-frequency dynamics of the kernel, the pair-mass tensor. Lieb-lattice calculations verify the equivalence of the thermodynamic, fluctuation-kernel, and soft-mode formulations and the independence of the superfluid weight from the orbital embedding.

arXiv:2610.08336•Oct 6, 2026•0 citations
We investigate collective excitations in flat-band superfluids by incorporating the coupled dynamics of pairing (phase and amplitude) and density fluctuations. We demonstrate that for any time-reversal symmetric superfluid system with an isolated flat band, only a single low-energy collective mode emerges in the long-wavelength limit. In contrast to the linearly dispersive Goldstone mode in conventional superfluids, this hybridized mode is gapless at zero momentum but exhibits a quadratic dispersion (ω∝q2ω\propto q^2ω∝q2) at small momenta. We show that the dispersion coefficients of this collective mode are governed by the normal-state quantum metric of the flat band. These analytical predictions are in excellent agreement with numerical calculations. Our results are applicable to any generic sss-wave flat-band superfluid, provided the flat band is energetically well separated from other dispersive bands.
We consider a generic Hamiltonian that is suitable for describing a uniform BCS superfluid on a lattice with a two-point basis and study its collective excitations at zero temperature. For this purpose, we first derive a Gaussian effective action for the pairing fluctuations and then extract the low-energy dispersion relations for the in-phase Goldstone and out-of-phase Leggett modes along with the corresponding amplitude (i.e., the so-called Higgs) ones. We find that while the Goldstone mode is gapless at zero momentum and propagating in general, the Leggett mode becomes undamped only with sufficiently strong interactions. Furthermore, we show that, in addition to the conventional contribution that is controlled by the energy of the Bloch bands, the velocity of the Goldstone mode has a geometric contribution that is governed by the quantum metric tensor of the Bloch states. Our results suggest that the latter contribution dominates the velocity when the former becomes negligible for a narrowband or a flatband.
The interplay between interactions and quantum geometry can drive weakly dispersive bosons into different exotic many-body phases. In this work we study a quasi flat-band model in one dimension that exhibits an extended pair-superfluid phase in the all-flat-band limit. Introducing single-particle hopping leads to an intriguing competition with a more conventional single-particle superfluid: we find that the pair superfluid remains stable for a finite range of the hopping strength until the system eventually transitions into the conventional superfluid phase. In our study, we make use of a variational Gaussian state approach that provides a unified description of the single-particle and pair superfluid phases, regarding both the ground state wavefunction and the collective excitation spectrum. In particular, we derive a general relation between the speed of sound and a ``quantum geometric kernel'', thereby extending earlier connections to the quantum metric, which relied on single-particle mean-field theory. This approach is combined with insights from the two-boson problem and exact diagonalization to map out the full phase diagram of the model. Our results show that the Gaussian approach is a versatile tool for studying a broad range of superfluid phases of interacting bosons in multi-orbital lattices.
In a flat band superconductor, bosonic excitations disperse while unpaired electrons are immobile. To study this strongly interacting system, we construct a family of multi-band Hubbard models with exact eta-pairing ground states in all space groups. We analytically compute their many-body excitations and find that the Cooper pair bound states obey an effective single-boson hopping Hamiltonian written in terms of the non-interacting wavefunctions. These bound states possess a unique zero-energy excitation whose quadratic dispersion is determined by the minimal quantum metric. The rest of the bound state spectrum is classified by topological quantum chemistry, which we use to identify Cooper pairs with Weyl nodes, higher angular momentum pairing, and fragile topology. Broadening the band dispersion, we find the strongest pairing occurs at half filling and not at the highest density of states. Our analytical results prove that the elementary fermionic and bosonic excitations, corresponding respectively to pairing and coherence, are governed by distinct properties of the flat band, rigorously establishing its unique phenomenology. Superconductivity in flat bands is a central feature of quantum geometric effects, supported by mean-field theory and numerics. Here, the authors exhibit a large family of flat band Hubbard models whose ground states, Bogoliubov-de-Gennes particles, and Cooper pairs are exactly solvable with analytically calculable dispersions.
We use the functional integral approach to study low energy collective excitations in a continuum model of neutral two-band superfluids at T=0T=0T=0 for all couplings with a separable pairing interaction. In the long wavelength and low frequency limit, we recover Leggett's analytical results in weak coupling (BCS) for sss-wave pairing, and further obtain analytical results in strong coupling Bose-Einstein condensation for both two and three dimensional systems. We also analyze numerically the behavior of the out-of-phase exciton (finite frequency) mode and the in-phase phonon (Goldstone) mode from weak to strong coupling limits, including the crossover region. In principle, the evolution of Goldstone and finite frequency modes from weak to strong coupling may be accessible experimentally in the superfluid phase of neutral Fermi atomic gases, and could serve as a test of the validity of the theoretical analysis and approximations proposed here.
The Mielke checkerboard is known to be one of the simplest two-band lattice models exhibiting an energetically flat band that is in touch with a quadratically dispersive band in the reciprocal space, i.e., its flat band is not isolated. Motivated by the growing interest in understanding the origins of flat-band superfluidity in various contexts, here we provide an in-depth analysis showing how the mean-field BCS correlations prevail in this particular model. Our work reveals the quantum-geometric origin of flat-band superfluidity through uncovering the leading role by a band-structure invariant, i.e., the so-called quantum metric tensor of the single-particle bands, in the inverse effective mass tensor of the Cooper pairs.
Beyond the frozen-pairing contribution, the superfluid weight of a multiband superconductor contains a correction from the self-consistent relaxation of the pairing amplitudes under a phase twist. We show that this correction has a quantum-geometric origin, not in the space of Bloch states but in the space of collective pairing fields. For an attractive multiband Hubbard model at the mean-field level, the thermodynamic Hessian governing the pairing response coincides with the static Gaussian pair-fluctuation kernel at zero momentum at every temperature below TcT_cTc​. Since gauge invariance relates a phase twist to a finite center-of-mass momentum of the pair field, the superfluid weight is set by the small-momentum curvature of the eigenvalue branch that evolves from the Goldstone mode, and the relaxation correction is a stiffness-weighted quantum metric of the corresponding soft eigenvector on the manifold of pairing configurations. The same construction yields the Ginzburg-Landau gradient coefficient with the identical geometric correction, hence the coherence-length tensor, and, with the low-frequency dynamics of the kernel, the pair-mass tensor. Lieb-lattice calculations verify the equivalence of the thermodynamic, fluctuation-kernel, and soft-mode formulations and the independence of the superfluid weight from the orbital embedding.