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We consider the problem of calculating the excitation spectrum of a gas of nonrelativistic anyons. When the anyons have statistics close to fermionic and the statistical angle has the form $\theta=\pi (1-\frac{1}{k})$ where $k$ is a large integer, the problem can be solved by employing the method of bosonization, which maps the problem to that of an infinite number of bosonic excitations coupled to a $U(1)$ Chern-Simons gauge field. The spectrum consists of a Goldstone boson branch and a large number of massive branches, each having roton minima and maxima. The dispersion curves asymptote to the Landau levels at large momentum., Comment: 19 pages, 2 figures; clarifications added, typos fixed

We carry out a theoretical investigation of overpressurized superfluid phases of He-4 by means of quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. As a function of density, we study structural and superfluid properties, and estimate the energy of the roton excitation by inverting imaginary-time density correlation functions computed by QMC, using Maximum Entropy. We estimate the pressure at which the roton energy vanishes to be about 100 bars, which we identify with the spinodal density, i.e., the upper limit for the existence of a metastable superfluid phase., Comment: 6 pages, 7 figures

We study the superfluid dynamics of the outer core of neutron stars by means of a hydrodynamic model made of a neutronic superfluid and a protonic superconductor, coupled by both the dynamic entrainment and the Skyrme SLy4 nucleon-nucleon interactions. The resulting nonlinear equations of motion are probed in the search for dynamical instabilities triggered by the relative motion of the superfluids that could be related to observed timing anomalies in pulsars. Through linear analysis, the origin and expected growth of the instabilities is explored for varying nuclear-matter density. Differently from previous findings, the dispersion of linear excitations in our model shows rotonic structures below the pair-breaking energy threshold, which lies at the origin of the dynamical instabilities, and could eventually lead to emergent vorticity along with modulations of the superfluid density., 10 pages, 5 figures. v2: minor changes

In the presence of dipolar interactions the excitation spectrum of a Bose gas can acquire a local minimum. The corresponding quasiparticles are known as rotons. They are gaped and do not decay at zero temperature. Here we study the decay of rotons in one-dimensional Bose gases at low temperatures. It predominantly occurs due to the backscattering of thermal phonons on rotons. The resulting rate scales with the third power of temperature and is inversely proportional to the sixth power of the roton gap near the solidification phase transition. The hydrodynamic approach used here enables us to find the decay rate for quasiparticles at practically any momenta, with minimal assumptions on the exact form of the interparticle interactions. Our results are an essential prerequisite for the description of all the dissipative phenomena in dipolar gases and have direct experimental relevance., 6 pages, 3 figures

Features of the phonon spectrum of a chiral crystal are examined within the micropolar elasticity theory. This formalism accounts for not only translational micromotions of a medium but also rotational ones. It is found that there appears the phonon band splitting depending on the left/right-circular polarization in a purely phonon sector without invoking any outside subsystem. The phonon spectrum reveals parity breaking while preserving time-reversal symmetry, i.e. it possesses true chirality. We find that hybridization of the micro-rotational and translational modes gives rise to the acoustic phonon branch with a "roton" minimum reminiscent of the elementary excitations in the superfluid helium-4. We argue that a mechanism of this phenomena is in line with Nozi\`{e}res' reinterpretation [J. Low Temp. Phys. \textbf{137}, 45 (2004)] of the rotons as a manifistation of an incipient crystallization instability. We discuss a close analogy between the translational and rotational micromotions in the micropolar elastic medium and the Bogoliubov quasiparticles and gapful density fluctuations in ${}^{4}$He., Comment: Main text (6 pages, 5 figures) + supplementary material (5 pages, 1 figure); accepted for publication in Physical Review Letters

Using the logarithmic superfluid model of physical vacuum, one can formulate a quantum theory, which successfully recovers Einstein's theory of relativity in low-momenta limit, but otherwise has different foundations and predictions. We present an analytical example of the dispersion relation and argue that it should have a Landau "roton" form which ensures the suppression of dissipative fluctuations. We show that at small momenta, a dispersion relation becomes relativistic with small deformations, such that a photon acquires effective mass, but a much more complex picture arises at large momenta., Comment: 3 pages, 1 figure, based on the talk given at the Tenth Alexander Friedmann International Seminar on Gravitation and Cosmology, Saint Petersburg, 24-28 June 2019

Author(s): Hertel, SA; Biekert, A; Lin, J; Velan, V; McKinsey, DN | Abstract: A promising technology concept for sub-GeV dark matter detection is described, in which low-temperature microcalorimeters serve as the sensors and superfluid He4 serves as the target material. We name this concept "HeRALD," helium roton apparatus for light dark matter. A superfluid helium target has several advantageous properties, including a light nuclear mass for better kinematic matching with light dark matter particles, copious production of scintillation light, extreme intrinsic radiopurity, high impedance to external vibration noise, and a unique "quantum evaporation" signal channel enabling the detection of phononlike modes via liberation of He4 atoms into a vacuum. In this concept, both scintillation photons and triplet excimers are detected using calorimeters, including calorimeters immersed in the superfluid. Kinetic excitations of the superfluid medium (rotons and phonons) are detected using quantum evaporation and subsequent atomic adsorption onto a calorimeter suspended in vacuum above the target helium. The energy of adsorption amplifies the phonon/roton signal before calorimetric sensing, producing a gain mechanism that can reduce the technology's recoil energy threshold below the calorimeter energy threshold. We describe signal production and signal sensing probabilities, and estimate the resulting electron recoil discrimination. We simulate radioactive backgrounds from gamma rays and construct an overall background spectrum expectation also including neutrons and solar neutrinos. Finally, we calculate projected sensitivities to dark matter-nucleon elastic scattering, demonstrating that even very small (sub-kg) target masses can probe wide regions of as-yet untested dark matter parameter space.

The entanglement spectrum of superfluid phases of 3He, the 3D B-phase and the planar phase in two dimensions, has been analyzed. The wavefunctions of the low-lying eigenstates, including Majorana zero modes, as well as the corresponding part of the spectrum of the entanglement Hamiltonian, have been found explicitly.

We analyze the quantum phase transition-like behavior in the lowest energy state of a two-site coupled atom-cavity system, where each cavity contains one atom but the total excitation number is not limited to two. Utilizing the variance of the total excitation number to distinguish the insulator and superfluid states, and the variance of the atomic excitation number to identify the polaritonic characteristics of these states, we find that the total excitation number plays a significant role in the lowest-energy-state phase transitions. In both the small hopping regime and the small atom-field interaction regime, we identify an interesting coexisting phase involving characteristics of both photonic superfluid and atomic insulator. For small hopping, we find that the signature of the photonic superfluid state becomes more pronounced with the increase in total excitation number, and that the boundaries of the various phases shift with respect to the case of $N=2$. In the limit of small atom-field interaction, the polaritonic superfluid region becomes broader as the total excitation number increases. We demonstrate that the variance of the total excitation number in a single site has a linear dependence on the total excitation number in the large-detuning limit., 7 pages, 9 figures, comments are welcome!

We consider excitons in a two-dimensional periodic potential and study the linear response of the excitonic superfluid to an electromagnetic wave at low and high densities. It turns out that the static structure factor for small wavevectors is very sensitive to a change of density and temperature. It is a consequence of the fact that thermal fluctuations play a crucial role at small wavevectors, since exchanging the order of the two limits, zero temperature and vanishing wavevector, leads to different results for the structure factor. This effect could be used for high accuracy measurements in the superfluid exciton phase, which might be realized by a gated electron-hole gas. The transition of the exciton system from the superfluid state to a non-superfluid state and its manifestation by light scattering are discussed., 9 pages, 5 figures

We have carried out a study of the momentum distribution and of the spectrum of elementary excitations of liquid $$^4$$ He across the normal–superfluid transition temperature, using the path integral Monte Carlo method. Our results for the momentum distribution in the superfluid regime show that a kink is present in the range of momenta corresponding to the roton excitation. This effect disappears when crossing the transition temperature to the normal fluid, in a behavior currently unexplained by theory.

Motivated by a recent experiment [L.Chomaz et al., Nature Physics 14, 442 (2018)], we perform numerical simulations of a dipolar Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC) in a tubular confinement at T=0 within Density Functional Theory, where the beyond-mean-field correction to the ground state energy is included in the Local Density Approximation. We study the excitation spectrum of the system by solving the corresponding Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. The calculated spectrum shows a roton minimum, and the roton gap decreases by reducing the effective scattering length. As the roton gap disappears, the system spontaneously develops in its ground-state a periodic, linear structure formed by denser clusters of atomic dipoles immersed in a dilute superfluid background. This structure shows the hallmarks of a supersolid system, i.e. (i) a finite non-classical translational inertia along the tube axis and (ii) the appearance, besides the phonon mode, of the Nambu-Goldstone gapless mode corresponding to phase fluctuations, and related to the spontaneous breaking of the gauge symmetry. A further decrease in the scattering length eventually leads to the formation of a periodic linear array of self-bound droplets., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures (version accepted for publication in PRA Rapid Communications)

We study by means of first principle Quantum Monte Carlo simulations the ground state phase diagram of a system of dipolar bosons with aligned dipole moments, and with the inclusion of a two-body repulsive potential of varying range. The system is shown to display a supersolid phase in a relatively broad region of the phase diagram, featuring different crystalline patterns depending on the density and on the range of the repulsive part of the interaction (scattering length). The supersolid phase is sandwiched between a classical crystal of parallel filaments and a homogeneous superfluid phase. We show that a "roton" minimum appears in the elementary excitation spectrum of the superfluid as the system approaches crystallization., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures

We present the results of computer simulations of the motion of an electron bubble through superfluid helium-4 when acted upon by an electric field. The simulations are based on an extended version of the Gross–Pitaevskii equation. The temperature is assumed to be sufficiently low for the drag exerted on the bubble by thermal excitations to be negligible, and the calculations are made for velocities below the critical velocitie for nucleation of vortices and roton production. We calculate the effective mass $$m*$$ of the bubble and obtain results in excellent agreement with the measurements of Poitrenaud and Williams, and Ellis, McClintock, and Bowley.

Based on numerous experimental data on inelastic neutron and X-ray scattering in liquids, we assert that the phonon–roton spectrum of collective excitations, predicted by Landau for superfluid helium, is a universal property of the liquid state. We show that the existence of the roton minimum in the spectrum of collective excitations is caused by the short-range order in liquids. Using the virial theorem, we assume that one more branch of excitations should exist in He II, whose energy spectrum differs from the phonon–roton spectrum. Such excitations are associated with the pole of single-particle Green function, which can have a gap at small values of momenta.

Theoretical study of the electrical activity of the saturated superfluid helium (He II) film upon the relative motion of the normal and superfluid components in the film was performed. The polarization vector due to the dipole moments of the quantized vortex rings in He II in the field of van der Waals forces was calculated taking into account the relative motion of the normal and superfluid components. An explicit analytical expression for the electric potential difference arising upon the relative motion of the normal and superfluid components in a torsional oscillator was derived. The obtained time, temperature and relative velocity dependences of the potential difference were in agreement with the experimental data.

We report on the first observation of 3He diffusion anisotropy in 3He–4He liquid mixture confined in ordered aerogels at 1.5–4.2 K temperatures. The used aerogels are arrays of long Al2O3 parallel 8 nm strands. The possible origins of diffusion anisotropy are considered and the changes of roton properties introduced by parallel aerogel strands are discussed. Among the responsible mechanisms we account for Knudsen diffusion, potential anisotropy of layer mode excitations or of bulklike excitations, and helium vortices. The observed reduced 3He diffusion in aerogels is discussed and suggested to appear due to helium excitations at strong confinement conditions. These observations pave the way for future experiments to gain insight into the crossover regime expected at lower temperatures (below 1 K) for which roton density is lower and 3He collisions with strands play significant role.

We study the reconnection of vortices in a quantum fluid with a roton minimum, by numerically solving the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equations. A non-local interaction potential is introduced to mimic the experimental dispersion relation of superfluid $^4\mathrm{He}$. We begin by choosing a functional shape of the interaction potential that allows to reproduce in an approximative way the so-called roton minimum observed in experiments, without leading to spurious local crystallization events. We then follow and track the phenomenon of reconnection starting from a set of two perpendicular vortices. A precise and quantitative study of various quantities characterizing the evolution of this phenomenon is proposed: this includes the evolution of statistics of several hydrodynamical quantities of interest, and the geometrical description of a observed helical wave packet that propagates along the vortex cores. Those geometrical properties are systematically compared to the predictions of the Local Induction Approximation (LIA), showing similarities and differences. The introduction of the roton minimum in the model does not change the macroscopic properties of the reconnection event but the microscopic structure of the vortices differs. Structures are generated at the roton scale and helical waves are evidenced along the vortices. However, contrary to what is expected in classical viscous or inviscid incompressible flows, the numerical simulations do not evidence the generation of structures at smaller or larger scales than the typical atomic size., 13 pages, 6 figures, final version, published

The concept of a roton, a special kind of elementary excitation, forming a minimum of energy at finite momentum, has been essential to understand the properties of superfluid 4He 1. In quantum liquids, rotons arise from the strong interparticle interactions, whose microscopic description remains debated 2. In the realm of highly-controllable quantum gases, a roton mode has been predicted to emerge due to magnetic dipole-dipole interactions despite of their weakly-interacting character 3. This prospect has raised considerable interest 4–12; yet roton modes in dipolar quantum gases have remained elusive to observations. Here we report experimental and theoretical studies of the momentum distribution in Bose-Einstein condensates of highly-magnetic erbium atoms, revealing the existence of the long-sought roton mode. Following an interaction quench, the roton mode manifests itself with the appearance of symmetric peaks at well-defined finite momentum. The roton momentum follows the predicted geometrical scaling with the inverse of the confinement length along the magnetisation axis. From the growth of the roton population, we probe the roton softening of the excitation spectrum in time and extract the corresponding imaginary roton gap. Our results provide a further step in the quest towards supersolidity in dipolar quantum gases 13.

Breakdown of the quantum Hall effect (QHE) is commonly associated with an electric field approaching the inter Landau-level (LL) Zener field, ratio of the Landau gap and cyclotron radius. Eluded in semiconducting heterostructures, in spite of extensive investigation, the intrinsic Zener limit is reported here using high-mobility bilayer graphene and high-frequency current noise. We show that collective excitations arising from electron-electron interactions are essential. Beyond a noiseless ballistic QHE regime a large superpoissonian shot noise signals the breakdown via inter-LL scattering. The breakdown is ultimately limited by collective excitations in a regime where phonon and impurity scattering are quenched. The breakdown mechanism can be described by a Landau critical velocity as it bears strong similarities with the roton mechanism of superfluids., 13 pages, 3 figures

We consider a two-component Bose-condensed mixture characterized by positive s-wave scattering lengths. We assume equal densities and intra-species interactions. By doing the Bogoliubov transformation of an effective Hamiltonian we obtain the lower energy magnon dispersion incorporating the superfluid entrainment between the components. We argue that p-wave pairing of distinct bosons should be accompanied by self-localization of magnons and formation of a magnetoroton. We demonstrate the effect on a model system of particles interacting via step potentials., Comment: 5 pages, 1 figure

Liquid helium and spin-1/2 cold-atom Fermi gases both exhibit in their superfluid phase two distinct types of excitations, gapless phonons and gapped rotons or fermionic pair-breaking excitations. In the long wavelength limit, revising and extending Landau and Khalatnikov's theory initially developed for helium [ZhETF 19, 637 (1949)], we obtain universal expressions for three- and four-body couplings among these two types of excitations. We calculate the corresponding phonon damping rates at low temperature and compare them to those of a pure phononic origin in high-pressure liquid helium and in strongly interacting Fermi gases, paving the way to experimental observations.

A necessary condition for the damping of the long-wavelength excitations of the superfluid phase (referred to as superfluid phonons) due to the three-particle process is to have an anomalous phonon dispersion. The existence of anomalous phonon dispersion has been confirmed in superfluid $$^4\mathrm {He}$$ . There are no experimental data suggesting that this phenomenon exists in superfluid Fermi gases. To the best of our knowledge, the existence of anomalous dispersion has been theoretically predicted only in atomic spin balanced Fermi gas close to the unitarity limit. The numerical results reported here suggest that the anomalous long-wavelength dispersion can be realized in mass and spin imbalanced atomic Fermi gases away from the unitary limit. In particular, the numerical solution of the Bethe–Salpeter equation in a weak-coupling regime shows that the long-wavelength part of the collective-mode dispersion of the superfluid Fulde–Ferrell phase of a mixture of population-imbalanced Lithium-6 and Potassium-40 atoms in a square lattice at some values of polarization, interacting strength and temperature initially bends upward before bending over.

Based on an analysis of available theoretical and experimental data, it is shown that the collective excitation spectrum is not identical to the single-particle excitation spectrum in superfluid helium 4He. It is shown that collective excitations with phonon-roton spectrum are not directly related to the superfluidity phenomenon.

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is a central paradigm of elementary particle physics, magnetism, superfluidity and superconductivity. According to Goldstone's theorem, phase transitions that break continuous symmetries lead to the existence of gapless excitations in the long-wavelength limit. These Goldstone modes generally dominate the low-energy excitations, showing that symmetry breaking has a profound impact on the physical properties of matter. Here, we present the first comprehensive study of the elementary excitations in a homogeneous strongly interacting Fermi gas through the crossover from a Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) of molecules using two-photon Bragg spectroscopy. The spectra exhibit a discrete Goldstone mode, associated with the broken symmetry superfluid phase, as well as pair breaking single-particle excitations. Our techniques yield a direct determination of the superfluid pairing gap and speed of sound in close agreement with a strong-coupling theory., Original version, full text published online in Nature Physics

We theoretically investigate a spin-orbit-coupled $s$-wave superfluid Fermi gas, to examine the time evolution of the system, after an $s$-wave pairing interaction is replaced by a $p$-wave one at $t=0$. In our recent paper [T. Yamaguchi, D. Inotani, and Y. Ohashi, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 86, 013001 (2017)], we proposed that this manipulation may realize a $p$-wave superfluid Fermi gas because the $p$-wave pair amplitude that is induced in the $s$-wave superfluid state by a parity-broken antisymmetric spin-orbit interaction gives a nonvanishing $p$-wave superfluid order parameter, immediately after the $p$-wave interaction is turned on. In this paper, using a time-dependent Bogoliubov-de Gennes theory, we assess this idea under various conditions with respect to the $s$-wave and $p$-wave interaction strengths, as well as the spin-orbit coupling strength. From these, we clarify that the momentum distribution of Fermi atoms in the initial $s$-wave state ($tl0$) is a key to produce a large $p$-wave superfluid order parameter. Since the realization of a $p$-wave superfluid state is one of the most exciting and difficult challenges in cold Fermi gas physics, our results may provide a possible way to accomplish this.

We present a theory of the superfluid weight in multiband attractive Hubbard models within the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) mean field framework. We show how to separate the geometric contribution to the superfluid weight from the conventional one, and that the geometric contribution is associated with the interband matrix elements of the current operator. Our theory can be applied to systems with or without time reversal symmetry. In both cases the geometric superfluid weight can be related to the quantum metric of the corresponding noninteracting systems. This leads to a lower bound on the superfluid weight given by the absolute value of the Berry curvature. We apply our theory to the attractive Kane-Mele-Hubbard and Haldane-Hubbard models, which can be realized in ultracold atom gases. Quantitative comparisons are made to state of the art dynamical mean-field theory and exact diagonalization results., Comment: Updated version, 17 pages, 10 figures

We study the winding number susceptibility < I^2> in a superfluid system and the topological susceptibility < Q^2> in QCD. We argue that both correlation functions exhibit similar structures, including the generation of the contact terms. We discuss the nature of the contact term in superfluid system and argue that it has exactly the same origin as in QCD, and it is related to the long distance physics which cannot be associated with conventional microscopical degrees of freedom such as phonons and rotons. We emphasize that the conceptual similarities between superfluid system and QCD may lead, hopefully, to a deeper understanding of the topological features of a superfluid system as well as the QCD vacuum., matches the published version

The thermal evolution of Neutron Stars is affected by the elementary excitations that characterize the stellar matter. In particular, the low-energy excitations, with a spectrum linear in momentum, can play a major role in the emission and propagation of neutrinos. In this paper, we focus on the elementary modes in the region of proton superfluidity, where the neutron component is expected to have a very small or zero pairing gap. We study the overall spectral functions of protons, neutrons and electrons on the basis of the Coulomb and nuclear interactions. This study is performed in the framework of the Random Phase Approximation, generalized in order to describe the response of a superfluid system. The formalism we use ensures that the Generalized Ward's Identities are satisfied. Despite their relative small fraction, the protons turn out to modify the neutron spectral function as a consequence of the nuclear neutron-proton interaction. This effect is particularly evident at the lower density, just below the crust for a density close to the saturation value, while at increasing density the neutrons and the protons are mainly decoupled. The proton spectral function is characterized by a pseudo-Goldstone mode below $ 2\Delta $, twice the pairing gap, and a pair-breaking mode above $ 2\Delta $. The latter merges in the sound mode of the normal phase at higher momenta. The neutron spectral function develops a collective sound mode only at the higher density. The electrons have a strong screening effect on the proton-proton interaction at the lower momenta, and decouple from the protons at higher momenta., Comment: 6 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. C

We investigate the collective excitations of a one-dimensional ultracold Fermi gas in the crossover from a Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer superfluid to a Bose-Einstein condensate. The trap we consider is a quadratic plus quartic potential in view of the relevant experimental conditions. Using variational approaches, the coupled equations of motions for the center-of-mass coordinate of the Superfluid Fermi gas and its width are derived. Then, two low-energy excitation modes are obtained analytically. The frequency shift induced by the anharmonic distortion, and the collapse and revival of the collective excitations originating from the nonlinear coupling between the two modes are discussed.

We establish the photonic superfluid theory in waveguides made of self-defocussing polar crystals. In quantum theory it is shown that photons can sense an attractive effective interaction by exchange of virtual optical phonons. Such an interaction leads to the photonic superfluid state, in which a propagating photon pair consists of a combination of two photons with opposite transverse wave vector and spins. The most important property of the photonic superfluid state is that the system of photon pairs evolves without scattering attenuations. The traveling-wave superfluid state has the squeezing property and the soliton effect.

Topological superfluids and superconductors have been theoretically proposed, and it is now necessary to experimentally confirm their existence. Superfluid 3He should be the ideal test subject for topological theories because its bulk state is established to be that of a spin-triplet p-wave superfluid. Surface Andreev bound states of superfluid 3He were investigated by transverse acoustic impedance measurements and their linear dispersion was confirmed on a highly specular wall. The superfluid 3He B phase was found to be a topological superfluid showing bulk–edge correspondence and a surface Majorana cone was confirmed on the surface. Possible manifestations of the Majorana nature of the surface states are discussed.

We study a system of penetrable bosons on a line, focusing on the high-density/weak-interaction regime, where the ground state is, to a good approximation, a condensate. Under compression, the system clusterizes at zero temperature, i.e., particles gather together in separate, equally populated bunches. We compare predictions from the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation with those of two distinct variational approximations of the single-particle state, written as either a sum of Gaussians or the square root of it. Not only the wave functions in the three theories are similar, but also the phase-transition density is the same for all. In particular, clusterization occurs together with the softening of roton excitations in GP theory. Compared to the latter theory, Gaussian variational theory has the advantage that the mean-field energy functional is written in (almost) closed form, which enables us to extract the phase-transition and high-density behaviors in fully analytic terms. We also compute the superfluid fraction of the clustered system, uncovering its exact behavior close, as well as very far away from, the transition., Comment: 27 pages, 4 figures

The hamiltonian for the interaction of phonons in superfluid helium with an oscillating solid surface is derived. It can be used to calculate the probabilities of elastic, and all the possible inelastic, processes for phonon transformation at superfluid helium-solid interfaces. The contributions of all these processes to the heat flux and to the difference in the heat fluxes between the superfluid helium and the solid are calculated. These results are compared with experimental data and with the results obtained by others.

An analysis of experimental data shows that, in addition to phonon-roton excitations in superfluid helium, there necessarily exist at least one branch of elementary excitations whose energy spectrum strongly depends on temperature. On this basis, the Landau superfluidity criterion is generalized for several branches of elementary excitations, taking into account that the critical velocity should vanish during the phase transition of liquid helium from the superfluid state to the normal state.

Superfluidity is a macroscopic quantum phenomenon occurring in systems as diverse as liquid helium and neutron stars. It occurs below a critical temperature(1,2) and leads to peculiar behaviour such as frictionless flow, the formation of quantized vortices and quenching of the moment of inertia. Ultracold atomic gases offer control of interactions and external confinement, providing unique opportunities to explore superfluid phenomena. Many such (finite-temperature) phenomena can be explained in terms of a two-fluid mixture(3,4) comprising a normal component, which behaves like an ordinary fluid, and a superfluid component with zero viscosity and zero entropy. The two-component nature of a superfluid is manifest in 'second sound', an entropy wave in which the superfluid and the non-superfluid components oscillate with opposite phases (as opposed to ordinary 'first sound', where they oscillate in phase). Here we report the observation of second sound in an ultracold Fermi gas with resonant interactions. The speed of second sound depends explicitly on the value of the superfluid fraction(5), a quantity that is sensitive to the spectrum of elementary excitations(6). Our measurements allow us to extract the temperature dependence of the superfluid fraction, a previously inaccessible quantity that will provide a benchmark for theories of strongly interacting quantum gases.

We proceed from the premise that the spectrum of elementary excitations in the normal component in the Landau theory of superfluidity should depend on the superfluid helium temperature. This leads to generalization of the Landau superfluidity criterion. On this basis, taking into account available experimental data on inelastic neutron scattering, it is shown that, in addition to phonon-roton excitations, there is another type of elementary excitation in superfluid helium, which we called helons. The energy spectrum with such momentum dependence was first proposed by Landau. The helon energy spectrum shape and its temperature dependence make it possible to explain the singular behavior of the heat capacity of superfluid helium near its phase transition to the normal state.

At the fundamental level, the 4-dimensional space-time of our direct experience might not be a continuum and discrete quantum entities might “collectively” rule its dynamics. Henceforth, it seems natural to think that in the “low-energy” regime some of its distinctive quantum attributes could, in principle, manifest themselves even at macroscopically large scales. Indeed, when confronted with Nature, classical gravitational dynamics of spinning astrophysical bodies is known to lead to paradoxes: to untangle them, dark matter or modifications to the classical law of gravity are openly considered. In this article, the hypothesis of a fluctuating space-time acquiring “at large distances” the properties of a Bose-Einstein condensate is pushed forward: firstly, it is shown that a natural outcome of this picture is the production of monopoles, dyons, and vortex lines of “quantized” gravitomagnetic—or gyrogravitational—flux along the transition phase; the minimal supported “charge” (and multiples of it) being directly linked with a nonzero (minimal) vacuum energy. Thus, a world of vibrating, spinning, interacting strings whose only elements in their construction are our topological concepts of space and time is envisioned, and they are proposed as tracers of the superfluid features of the space-time: the archetypal embodiment of these physical processes being set by the “gravitational roton”, an analogue of Landau’s classic higher-energy excitation used to explain the superfluid properties of helium II. The far and the near field asymptotics of string line solutions are presented and used to deduce their pair-interaction energy. Remarkably, it is found that two stationary, axis-aligned, quantum space-time vortices with the same sense of spin not only exhibit zones of repulsion but also of attraction, depending on their relative geodetic distance.

We present a path integral Monte Carlo study of the global superfluid fraction and local superfluid density in cylindrically symmetric reservoirs of liquid $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ separated by nanoaperture arrays. The superfluid response to both translations along the axis of symmetry (longitudinal response) and rotations about the cylinder axis (transverse response) are computed, together with radial and axial density distributions that reveal the microscopic inhomogeneity arising from the combined effects of the confining external potential and the $^{4}\mathrm{He}{\ensuremath{-}}^{4}\text{He}$ interatomic potentials. We make a microscopic determination of the length scale of decay of superfluidity at the radial boundaries of the system by analyzing the local superfluid density distribution to extract a displacement length that quantifies the superfluid mass displacement away from the boundary. We find that the longitudinal superfluid response is reduced in reservoirs separated by a septum containing sufficiently small apertures compared to a cylinder with no intervening aperture array, for all temperatures below ${T}_{\ensuremath{\lambda}}$. For a single aperture in the septum, a significant drop in the longitudinal superfluid response is seen when the aperture diameter is made smaller than twice the empirical temperature-dependent $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ healing length, consistent with the formation of a weak link between the reservoirs. Increasing the diameter of a single aperture or the number of apertures in the array results in an increase of the superfluid density toward the expected bulk value.

The Orsay-Trento bosonic density functional theory model is extended to include dissipation due to the viscous response of superfluid (4)He present at finite temperatures. The viscous functional is derived from the Navier-Stokes equation by using the Madelung transformation and includes the contribution of interfacial viscous response present at the gas-liquid boundaries. This contribution was obtained by calibrating the model against the experimentally determined electron mobilities from 1.2 K to 2.1 K along the saturated vapor pressure line, where the viscous response is dominated by thermal rotons. The temperature dependence of ion mobility was calculated for several different solvation cavity sizes and the data are rationalized in the context of roton scattering and Stokes limited mobility models. Results are compared to the experimentally observed "exotic ion" data, which provides estimates for the corresponding bubble sizes in the liquid. Possible sources of such ions are briefly discussed.

The dynamics of superfluid 4He at and above the Landau quasiparticle regime is investigated by high precision inelastic neutron scattering measurements of the dynamic structure factor. A highly structured response is observed above the familiar phonon-maxon-roton spectrum, characterized by sharp thresholds for phonon-phonon, maxon-roton and roton-roton coupling processes. The experimental dynamic structure factor is compared to the calculation of the same physical quantity by a Dynamic Many-body theory including three-phonon processes self-consistently. The theory is found to provide a quantitative description of the dynamics of the correlated bosons for energies up to about three times that of the Landau quasiparticles., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures

We study the effects of quasiparticle interactions in a quasi-two-dimensional (quasi-2D), zero-temperature Bose-Einstein condensate of dipolar atoms, which can exhibit a roton-maxon feature in its quasiparticle spectrum. Our focus is the Beliaev damping process, in which a quasiparticle collides with the condensate and resonantly decays into a pair of quasiparticles. Remarkably, the rate for this process exhibits a highly nontrivial dependence on the quasiparticle momentum and the dipolar interaction strength. For weak interactions, low-energy phonons experience no damping, and higher-energy quasiparticles undergo anomalously weak damping. In contrast, the Beliaev damping rates become anomalously large for stronger dipolar interactions, as rotons become energetically accessible as final states. When the dipoles are tilted off the axis of symmetry, the damping rates acquire an anisotropic character. Surprisingly, this anisotropy does not simply track the anisotropy of the dipolar interactions, rather, the mechanisms for damping are qualitatively modified in the anisotropic case. Our study reveals the unconventional nature of Beliaev damping in dipolar condensates, and has important implications for ongoing studies of equilibrium and nonequilibrium dynamics in these systems. Further, our results are relevant for other 2D superfluids with roton excitations, including spin-orbit-coupled Bose gases, magnon condensates, and $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ films.

We study a system with competing short- and global-range interactions in the framework of the Bose-Hubbard model. Using a mean-field approximation we obtain the phase diagram of the system and observe four different phases: a superfluid, a supersolid, a Mott insulator and a charge density wave, where the transitions between the various phases can be either of first or second order. We qualitatively support these results using Monte-Carlo simulations. An analysis of the low-energy excitations shows that the second-order phase transition from the charge density wave to the supersolid is associated with the softening of particle- and hole-like excitations which give rise to a gapless mode and an amplitude Higgs mode in the supersolid phase. This amplitude Higgs mode is further transformed into a roton mode which softens at the supersolid to superfluid phase transition.