Relativistic superfluid hydrodynamics from field theory
Abstract
It is well known that the hydrodynamics of a zero-temperature superfluid can be formulated in field-theoretic terms, relating for example the superfluid four-velocity to the gradient of the phase of a Bose-condensed scalar field. At nonzero temperatures, where the phenomenology of a superfluid is usually described within a two-fluid picture, this relationship is less obvious. For the case of a uniform, dissipationless superfluid at small temperatures and weak coupling we discuss this relationship within a phi^4 model. For instance, we compute the entrainment coefficient, which describes the interaction between the superfluid and the normal-fluid components, and the velocities of first and second sound in the presence of a superflow. Our study is very general, but can also be seen as a step towards understanding the superfluid properties of various phases of dense nuclear and quark matter in the interior of compact stars.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1212.4410,
title = {Relativistic superfluid hydrodynamics from field theory},
author = {Mark G. Alford and S. Kumar Mallavarapu and Andreas Schmitt and Stephan Stetina},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1212.4410},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
8 pages, 1 figure, contribution to the proceedings of "Xth Quark Confinement and the Hadron Spectrum", October 8-12, 2012, Munich, Germany