A primer on quantum fluids

This book introduces the theoretical description and properties of quantum fluids. The focus is on gaseous atomic Bose-Einstein condensates and, to a minor extent, superfluid helium, but the underlying concepts are relevant to other forms of quantum fluids such as polariton and photonic condensates. The book is pitched at the level of advanced undergraduates and early postgraduate students, aiming to provide the reader with the knowledge and skills to develop their own research project on quantum fluids. Indeed, the content for this book grew from introductory notes provided to our own research students. It is assumed that the reader has prior knowledge of undergraduate mathematics and/or physics; otherwise, the concepts are introduced from scratch, often with references for directed further reading.Comment: 132 pages. Published as SpringerBriefs in Physics book. Typos corrected in this versio

Dynamical properties of a trapped dipolar Fermi gas at finite temperature

We investigate the dynamical properties of a trapped finite-temperature normal Fermi gas with dipole-dipole interaction. For the free expansion dynamics, we show that the expanded gas always becomes stretched along the direction of the dipole moment. In addition, we present the temperature and interaction dependences of the asymptotical aspect ratio. We further study the collapse dynamics of the system by suddenly increasing the dipolar interaction strength. We show that, in contrast to the anisotropic collapse of a dipolar Bose-Einstein condensate, a dipolar Fermi gas always collapses isotropically when the system becomes globally unstable. We also explore the interaction and temperature dependences for the frequencies of the low-lying collective excitations.Comment: 11 pages, 7 figure

A Minimization Method for Relativistic Electrons in a Mean-Field Approximation of Quantum Electrodynamics

We study a mean-field relativistic model which is able to describe both the behavior of finitely many spin-1/2 particles like electrons and of the Dirac sea which is self-consistently polarized in the presence of the real particles. The model is derived from the QED Hamiltonian in Coulomb gauge neglecting the photon field. All our results are non-perturbative and mathematically rigorous.Comment: 18 pages, 3 figure

Scaling Calculation of Isoscalar Giant Resonances in Relativistic Thomas-Fermi Theory

We derive analytical expressions for the excitation energy of the isoscalar giant monopole and quadrupole resonances in finite nuclei, by using the scaling method and the extended Thomas-Fermi approach to relativistic mean field theory. We study the ability of several non-linear sigma-omega parameter sets of common use in reproducing the experimental data. For monopole oscillations the calculations agree better with experiment when the nuclear matter incompressibility of the relativistic interaction lies in the range 220-260 MeV. The breathing-mode energies of the scaling method compare satisfactorily with those obtained in relativistic RPA and time-dependent mean field calculations. For quadrupole oscillations all the analyzed non-linear parameter sets reproduce the empirical trends reasonably well.Comment: 41 pages, LaTeX, 4 eps figure