High-temperature expansion of the viscosity in interacting quantum gases

We compute the frequency-dependent shear and bulk viscosity spectral functions of an interacting Fermi gas in a quantum virial expansion up to second quadratic order in the fugacity parameter $z=e^{\beta \mu}$, which is small at high temperatures. Calculations are carried out using a diagrammatic finite-temperature field-theoretic framework, in which the analytic continuation from Matsubara to real frequencies is carried out in closed analytic form. Besides a possible zero-frequency Drude peak, our results for the spectral functions show a broad continuous spectrum at all frequencies with an additional bound-state contribution for frequencies larger than the dimer-breaking energy. Our results are consistent with various sum rules and universal high-frequency tails. In the low-frequency limit, the shear viscosity spectral function is recast as a collision integral, which reproduces known results for the static shear viscosity from kinetic theory. Our findings for the static bulk viscosity of a Fermi gas near unitarity, however, show a nonanalytic dependence on the scattering length, at variance with kinetic theory.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Mesoscopic pairing without superconductivity

We discuss pairing signatures in mesoscopic nanowires with variable attractive pairing interaction. Depending on wire length, density, and interaction strength, these systems realize a simultaneous bulk-to-mesoscopic and BCS-BEC crossover, which we describe in terms of the parity parameter that quantifies the odd-even energy difference and generalizes the bulk Cooper pair binding energy to mesoscopic systems. We show that the parity parameter can be extracted from recent measurements of conductance oscillations in SrTiO$_3$ nanowires by G. Cheng et al. [Nature 521, 196 (2015)], where it marks the critical magnetic field that separates pair and single-particle currents. Our results place the experiment in the fluctuation-dominated mesoscopic regime on the BCS side of the crossover.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figure

Dimensional reduction in quantum field theories at finite temperature and density

In this work we present two correspondences between the massless Gross-Neveu model with one or two coupling constants in 1+1 dimensions and nonrelativistic field theories in 3+1 dimensions. It is shown that on a mean-field level the massless Gross-Neveu model can be mapped onto BCS theory provided that translational invariance of the condensate is assumed. The generalized massless Gross-Neveu model with two coupling constants is mapped onto a quasi one-dimensional extended Hubbard model used in the description of spin-Peierls systems. It is shown that the particle hole symmetry of the Hubbard model implies self-consistency of the condensate. The dimensional reduction allows an identification of the phase diagrams of the models.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures; v2: corrected typos and references, version accepted for publication in PR

Current response, structure factor and hydrodynamic quantities of a two- and three-dimensional Fermi gas from the operator-product expansion

We apply the operator-product expansion to determine the asymptotic form of the current response of a Fermi gas in two and three dimensions. The leading-order term away from the one-particle peak is proportional to a quantity known as the contact, the coefficient of which is determined exactly. We also calculate the dynamic structure factor and the high-frequency tails of the spectral viscosities as a function of the scattering length. Our results are used to derive certain sum rules for the viscosities.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figure

Quantum oscillations in Dirac magnetoplasmons

The plasmon frequency in standard electron gases with a parabolic single-particle dispersion is a purely classical quantity that is not sensitive to electron interactions or the equation of state. We demonstrate that this canonical result no longer holds for plasmons in three-dimensional semimetals, which can thus be used to probe many-body effects in these systems. In particular, we show that the plasmon frequency in an external magnetic field displays quantum oscillations, which is not the case for the electron gas. Using the random phase approximation, results are presented for the magnetoplasmon dispersion and the loss function in Dirac semimetals. We include a full discussion of the loss function in a magnetic field as a function of the direction of propagation with respect to the magnetic field direction and discuss the transition from large magnetic fields to the low-field limit.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Pairing effects in the non-degenerate limit of the two-dimensional Fermi gas

The spectral function of a spin-balanced two-dimensional Fermi gas with short-range interactions is calculated by means of a quantum cluster expansion. Good qualitative agreement is found with a recent experiment by Feld $\textit{et al.}$ [Nature (London) $\textbf{480}$, 75 (2011)]. The effects of pairing are clearly visible in the density of states, which displays a suppression of spectral weight due to the formation of a two-body bound state. In addition, the momentum distribution and the radio-frequency spectrum are derived, which are in excellent agreement with exact universal results. It is demonstrated that in the limit of high temperature, the quasiparticle excitations are well defined, allowing for a kinetic description of the gas.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figures, updated to status of published versio

Efimov correlations in strongly interacting Bose gases

We compute the virial coefficients, the contact parameters, and the momentum distribution of a strongly interacting three-dimensional Bose gas by means of a virial expansion up to third order in the fugacity, which takes into account three-body correlations exactly. Our results characterize the nondegenerate regime of the interacting Bose gas, where the thermal wavelength is smaller than the interparticle spacing but the scattering length may be arbitrarily large. We observe a rapid variation of the third virial coefficient as the scattering length is tuned across the three-atom and the atom-dimer thresholds. The momentum distribution at unitarity displays a universal high-momentum tail with a log-periodic momentum dependence, which is a direct signature of Efimov physics. We provide a quantitative description of the momentum distribution at high momentum as measured by P. Makotyn et al. [Nat. Phys. 10, 116 (2014)], and our calculations indicate that the lowest trimer state might not be occupied in the experiment. Our results allow for a spectroscopy of Efimov states in the unitary limit.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Plasmon signature in Dirac-Weyl liquids

We consider theoretically as a function of temperature the plasmon mode arising in three-dimensional Dirac liquids, i.e., systems with linear chiral relativistic single-particle dispersion, within the random phase approximation. We find that whereas no plasmon mode exists in the intrinsic (undoped) system at zero temperature, there is a well-defined finite-temperature plasmon with superlinear temperature dependence, rendering the plasmon dispersion widely tunable with temperature. The plasmon dispersion contains a logarithmic correction due to the ultraviolet-logarithmic renormalization of the electron charge, manifesting a fundamental many-body interaction effect as in quantum electrodynamics. The plasmon dispersion of the extrinsic (doped) system displays a minimum at finite temperature before it crosses over to the superlinear intrinsic behavior at higher temperature, implying that the high-temperature plasmon is a universal feature of Dirac liquids irrespective of doping. This striking characteristic temperature dependence of intrinsic Dirac plasmons along with the logarithmic renormalization is a unique manifestation of the three-dimensional relativistic Dirac nature of quasiparticle excitations and serves as an experimentally observable signature of three-dimensional Dirac materials.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

Surface plasmon polaritons in topological Weyl semimetals

We consider theoretically surface plasmon polaritons in Weyl semimetals. These materials contain pairs of band touching points - Weyl nodes - with a chiral topological charge, which induces an optical anisotropy and anomalous transport through the chiral anomaly. We show that these effects, which are not present in ordinary metals, have a direct fundamental manifestation in the surface plasmon dispersion. The retarded Weyl surface plasmon dispersion depends on the separation of the Weyl nodes in energy and momentum space. For Weyl semimetals with broken time-reversal symmetry, the distance between the nodes acts as an effective applied magnetic field in momentum space, and the Weyl surface plasmon polariton dispersion is strikingly similar to magnetoplasmons in ordinary metals. In particular, this implies the existence of nonreciprocal surface modes. In addition, we obtain the nonretarded Weyl magnetoplasmon modes, which acquire an additional longitudinal magnetic-field dependence. These predicted surface plasmon results are observable manifestations of the chiral anomaly in Weyl semimetals and might have technological applications.Comment: 8 pages, 2 figure

Short-distance properties of Coulomb systems

We use the operator product expansion to derive exact results for the momentum distribution and the static structure factor at high momentum for a jellium model of electrons in both two and three dimensions. It is shown that independent of the precise state of the Coulomb system and for arbitrary temperatures, the asymptotic behavior is a power law in the momentum, whose strength is determined by the contact value of the pair distribution function $g(0)$. The power-law tails are quantum effects which vanish in the classical limit $\hbar \to 0$. A leading order virial expansion shows that the classical and the high-temperature limit do not agree.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, updated to status of published versio