Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2025 iii Paper 337 2 a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-25
Under Fermi-surface renormalization-group scaling, tangential momentum is fixed whileIn frequency space the quadratic action is invariant whenequivalently, in the time representation and . The free Fermi liquid action is therefore marginal.
The deformation has no factor of frequency or normal momentum, so it is relevant. It shifts the zero of the quasiparticle energy from to and hence deforms the Fermi surface.
A generic quartic interaction is irrelevant because momentum conservation fixes a normal component and leaves an additional positive power of . It can be marginal only when all four momenta remain on the Fermi surface while satisfyingFor a smooth generic Fermi surface, the robust possibilities are forward or exchange scattering and the opposite-momentum BCS channel , .
Past exam of the physics B course of the University of Cambridge 2018 Paper 2 Section C C13 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Entropy at absolute zero. The third law of thermodynamics concerns the low-temperature limit of equilibrium states. In the zero-entropy formulation, the entropy of a perfect crystal with a nondegenerate ground state tends to zero as . The statistical interpretation is : a unique accessible ground state has . The entropy-difference formulation of the third law of thermodynamics states that entropy differences associated with regular changes of mechanical parameters tend to zero as absolute zero is approached. These statements require equilibrium and appropriate ground-state assumptions; a frozen disordered material or a degenerate ground state can carry residual entropy.
For a phase of fixed composition and pressure,A finite limiting entropy constrains this integral. Ordinary equilibrium heat capacities therefore vanish as temperature approaches zero, with familiar examples for three-dimensional acoustic phonons and for a normal degenerate Fermi liquid. A constant positive heat capacity extrapolated to zero would give a logarithmically divergent entropy difference and is impossible in this regime. Discontinuous transitions and anomalous limits need separate treatment rather than extending a high-temperature approximation indefinitely.
Gibbs free energy. For fixed particle numbers,Thus, when , the Gibbs free energy approaches its zero-temperature value with a horizontal tangent:The equality uses the enthalpy ; neither limiting value needs to be zero. The low-temperature Gibbs free-energy expansion makes the approach quantitative. For with and ,The second derivative is , although it need not tend to zero. For a reaction between such equilibrium phases, , and and approach one another. If a genuine residual entropy is retained instead, has limiting slope . A horizontal tangent cannot be asserted without the zero-entropy condition.
Why helium remains a liquid. Helium atoms attract each other weakly and are exceptionally light. Their zero-point energy is large compared with the binding that would localize them in a solid. Both helium-4 and helium-3 can therefore remain liquid down to the lowest temperatures at low pressure; substantial applied pressure is needed to solidify them. This is not a violation of the third law. A quantum liquid can have a unique low-entropy ground state, and zero-point motion does not itself imply thermal entropy. The third law does not require every substance to crystallize at atmospheric pressure.
A helium-4 atom has integer spin zero and is a boson. Below the lambda point near at saturated vapor pressure, its liquid is superfluid. Its strong interactions mean that it is not quantitatively an ideal Bose gas, and the condensate fraction need not equal the superfluid fraction. The two-fluid model of superfluidity separates an entropy-carrying normal component of a superfluid from the superfluid component, whose entropy is zero. At sufficiently low temperature the dominant thermal excitations are acoustic phonons: their linear dispersion in three dimensions gives , and . Higher-energy rotons are exponentially suppressed. Thus the normal component of a superfluid and entropy disappear as , while superfluid flow and quantum motion can persist.
A helium-3 atom has spin and is a fermion. Well below its Fermi temperature, but above its superfluid transition, liquid helium-3 is a degenerate interacting Fermi liquid. Only quasiparticles close to the Fermi surface are thermally excited, giving and . At temperatures of order a millikelvin, helium-3 also becomes superfluid through formation of Cooper pairs of fermions. This is not Bose-Einstein condensation of individual helium-3 atoms. Pairing reorganizes the low-energy excitation spectrum; in the fully gapped bulk B phase, the fermionic quasiparticle contribution to heat capacity is exponentially suppressed at temperatures well below the pairing gap. Gapless collective modes can still give thermal terms following a power law. The entropy nevertheless tends to zero. The normal Fermi-liquid law cannot be extrapolated through its pairing transition unchanged.[ref]
The Extraordinary Phases of Liquid 3He by David Morris Lee. 1996 Nobel lecture, discussion of helium isotopes and paired superfluid phases
Helium-3 also illustrates the importance of nuclear spin entropy. Over an intermediate low-temperature range, localized spins in the solid can retain approximately of entropy per atom, while the degenerate liquid has much less. Reversible conversion of liquid to the higher-entropy solid then absorbs heat; adiabatic compression along the melting curve can cool the sample. This is Pomeranchuk cooling. At still lower temperature, interactions between the nuclear spins remove this nearly free-spin entropy, so a constant cannot be extrapolated to absolute zero.[ref]
The Pomeranchuk Effect by Robert Coleman Richardson. 1996 Nobel lecture, entropy comparison and compression cooling
Liquefaction and cooling methods. A gas must be below its liquid-gas critical point to form a distinct liquid phase by compression. Compression above the critical temperature alone cannot achieve ordinary liquid-vapour coexistence. Practical liquefaction removes the compression heat, cools the compressed gas in a heat exchanger and uses expansion to lower its temperature further.
A throttling valve operates approximately at constant specific enthalpy when kinetic-energy changes and heat leakage are negligible. The Joule-Thomson coefficient isusing consistent molar quantities, or consistent total quantities for a fixed amount. A pressure drop cools the gas if . An ideal gas has zero Joule-Thomson coefficient; real intermolecular interactions are essential. In particular, room-temperature helium warms on throttling, so it must first be brought into a region of positive Joule-Thomson coefficient. Expansion through an engine or turbine can instead remove work and produce approximately isentropic cooling.
A regenerative liquefier sends the cold returning gas through a counterflow heat exchanger to precool the incoming compressed gas before its next expansion. Expansion engines and external precooling can supply the initial cooling; repeated operation then produces liquid. Modern helium liquefaction commonly combines work-producing expansion with a final throttle. [ref]
https://trc.nist.gov/cryogenics/Papers/Review/2020-Review_of_Refrigeration_Methods.pdf. Review of Refrigeration Methods, helium liquefiers and Claude cycles
Once liquid exists, pumping away vapour lowers its saturation pressure and boiling temperature. The escaping vapour carries latent heat away, cooling the remaining liquid. At still lower temperatures, a dilution refrigerator exploits the different entropy carried by helium-3 in concentrated and dilute helium mixtures; adiabatic demagnetization and Pomeranchuk cooling provide other routes.
Approaching zero. The unattainability formulation of the third law states that regular cooling operations with finite resources cannot reach absolute zero in finitely many stages. As the entropy available to remove becomes small and thermal couplings weaken, each method loses its ability to take the final step. An isentropic cooling trajectory starting at nonzero entropy cannot reach a common zero-entropy endpoint through regular finite changes of parameters. A fully general finite-time claim also requires assumptions about available controls and heat-transfer rates. Quantum liquids and refrigeration methods can approach while remaining consistent with vanishing equilibrium entropy; they do not provide a finite-operation route to absolute zero.
A Landau quasiparticle is an electron-like excitation dressed by the interacting medium. Adiabatic continuity connects low-energy states of an ordinary Fermi liquid to those of a free Fermi gas without changing their particle statistics or conserved quantum numbers. The excitation has a renormalized dispersion, effective mass, magnetic response and finite lifetime. Pauli exclusion principle restricts collisions near the Fermi surface; in a regular three-dimensional Fermi liquid,Thus the width is small compared with excitation energy sufficiently near the surface at low temperature. This permits particle-like counting and transport even when microscopic interactions are strong. It does not make every interaction disappear: the Landau quasiparticle energy functional contains residual interactions,Specific heats and magnetic susceptibilities need not equal their bare-gas values. Logarithmic corrections can modify the lifetime scale in two dimensions, and a Luttinger liquid or a fractional Hall fluid is not an ordinary weakly perturbed electron gas.
An electron-like excitation in a normal metal and a neutral fermionic excitation in normal helium-3 are Landau quasiparticles. More generally, phonons, magnons and excitons are particle-like collective excitations, with their own statistics and quantum numbers; they are not all Landau quasiparticles. composite fermions are another emergent description, reorganizing correlations in a partly occupied Landau level rather than simply replacing the electron mass in an ordinary band.
Attach two statistical flux quanta to each electron. Even attachment preserves fermionic exchange statistics, while the average statistical field opposes the applied field:This is an effective description of correlations, not literal flux tubes produced by small solenoids. An integer number of filled effective levels can give an incompressible electronic fractional Hall state. This is the correspondence between integer Hall quantization of composite fermions and selected fractional Hall states of electrons.[ref]
Composite-fermion approach for the fractional quantum Hall effect by J. K. Jain. 1989 publisher abstract: fractional Hall states as integer states after even flux attachment
Setting the signed effective filling to integer givesPositive gives below . Negative , , gives above it, including . The sign records reversed . At , the mean effective field vanishes, so the simplest description is a compressible composite-fermion sea rather than another member with finite integer . Fractional charged excitations of gapped Hall states and the charge used in this semiclassical composite-fermion orbit description should not be conflated.
A direct probe away from the incompressible fractions is composite-fermion geometric resonance. One implementation patterned a high-mobility GaAs/AlGaAs Hall bar into periodic and random antidot arrays. electron beam lithography followed by an approximately reactive-ion etch made arrays with periods –. Four-terminal low-current measurements swept a perpendicular magnetic field at low temperature; red-light illumination varied density and the modulation. Periodic arrays showed commensurability structure near half filling and a Hall anomaly; matched random arrays did not. Unpatterned sections supplied another reference.[ref]
Composite fermions in periodic and random antidot lattices by J. H. Smet and others. pp.3598–3600, fabrication, measurement method and Figs.1–3
The semiclassical explanation uses, for a fully spin-polarized sea,The mass cancels from the orbit radius. A selected orbit fits the lattice when , with a geometry-dependent constant of order unity. Pinned orbits around antidots then alter longitudinal transport, producing features nearThe simplest single-antidot scale has ; detailed peak positions require the actual potential and orbit family. The two field directions bend orbits oppositely. The diagnostic is an orbit scale controlled by the small residual , rather than the much larger applied . At the same density the fully polarized is times the zero-field spin-degenerate electron value; this is an independent counting test.
Calibrate density from independent Hall/filling measurements and compare several lattice periods. Use small excitation and temperature sweeps, and check periodic, random and unpatterned regions. Density variation changes both and the orbit scale, so simply plotting against uncorrected field can mislead. mean free path and density inhomogeneity limit resolution; illumination can soften or substantially change the imposed potential, so it cannot automatically be treated as density adjustment alone. These qualifications are part of the inference from geometry to emergent particles, rather than a claim that every feature near half filling is a new fractional plateau.
Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2005 Section B B4 d Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
In a heavy fermion material, correlated low-energy quasiparticles have a large electronic density of states and effective mass. A Kondo lattice with hybridization between localized f-electron states and conduction states is an important setting. The large mass is a low-energy dynamical property, not a change in the electron's bare mass or the ionic mass.
Low-temperature calorimetry measures in a regime where an electronic linear term and a Debye lattice term are appropriate. The large intercept measures the enhanced quasiparticle density of states, with volume or molar conventions kept consistent. Apply a known heat pulse to a thermally characterized sample platform and measure the temperature rise, then vary the base temperature to separate contributions.
In low-temperature calorimetry and resistivity of CeAl3, measurements below gave and with . The large thermal coefficient and enhanced quadratic transport coefficient are complementary evidence for a strongly renormalized Fermi liquid.[ref]
4f-Virtual-Bound-State Formation in CeAl3 at Low Temperatures by Klaus Andres and others. Abstract: measured coefficients and sub-0.2 K range
Enhanced spin susceptibility provides another probe. Where coherent quantum oscillations can be resolved, their thermal damping determines a cyclotron effective mass, giving a band-sensitive comparison with the thermodynamic mass inferred from heat capacity. Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2007 Section B B2 b Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
In a heavy fermion material, interactions of narrow, often -derived states with conduction electrons produce low-energy quasiparticles with very large thermodynamic effective mass. A coherent Kondo lattice can form a narrow low-energy band, so the large mass is an interaction-renormalized response rather than a larger bare electron mass.
Two concrete experimental signatures are an enormous linear electronic heat capacity coefficient and a strongly enhanced quadratic low-temperature electrical resistivity. Calorimetry separates by plotting against ; the intercept measures the electronic coefficient rather than a lattice contribution. Four-terminal transport tests the Fermi liquid law . The low-temperature calorimetry and resistivity of CeAl3 found and below , making both signatures quantitative.[ref]
4f-Virtual-Bound-State Formation in CeAl3 at Low Temperatures by Klaus Andres and others. Abstract: specific heat and electrical resistivity below 0.2 K, with gamma and the quadratic resistivity coefficient
An enhanced nearly temperature-independent spin susceptibility and a large quantum-oscillation cyclotron effective mass provide additional tests. Not every heavy-fermion compound has the same ordered ground state; magnetism or superconductivity can intervene before a simple normal Fermi-liquid limit is reached.
Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2013 2 a Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
A solid stores thermal energy in lattice vibrations and, when available, electronic and other excitations. For a nonmagnetic insulating crystal at sufficiently low temperature, the gap suppresses mobile electronic excitations and the leading bulk contribution normally comes from acoustic phonons. The three-dimensional Debye heat capacity isThe vibrational density of states scales as , so only a fraction proportional to of the modes is thermally active at low temperature. The two limiting forms areThe high-temperature value is the Dulong-Petit law, or per mole of atoms. Optical phonons add thermally activated contributions as their characteristic energies become accessible. A multiatom cell has more branches, but still three vibrational degrees of freedom per atom.
A normal metal has an additional low-temperature electronic heat capacity. The Pauli exclusion principle restricts excitations to a shell of width about around the Fermi energy. The number of thermally active electrons is therefore proportional to , rather than the total electron number contributing a classical heat capacity. With spin-summed electronic density of states for the whole specimen,For a three-dimensional free-electron gas, and . Only a small fraction of the classical electronic value is accessible when , even though the electronic term dominates the phonon term as in a normal gapless metal.
Plotting against gives a straight line with intercept and slope in the appropriate low-temperature range. This separates the electronic density-of-states information from the acoustic-phonon scale. In a Fermi liquid, the interacting quasiparticle density of states replaces the free value, so an enhanced effective mass enhances .
The qualifications matter experimentally. Superconductivity can gap electronic excitations, magnetic order adds magnetic excitations, defects can generate additional low-temperature terms, and low-dimensional or very small specimens need not obey the bulk cubic law. The Debye expression is for constant-volume heat capacity; constant-pressure heat capacity differs through thermal expansion, although the difference is often small at low temperature. Thus the normal-metal and ordinary insulating limits are useful leading behaviors, not universal formulas for every solid in every phase.
Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2013 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
A normal Fermi liquid describes an interacting fermion system whose low-energy excitations remain continuously connected to adding particles to or removing particles from a Fermi gas. The elementary long-lived excitation is a Landau quasiparticle: adding a particle also changes the surrounding many-body state. Its energy, velocity and interactions are renormalized, even though its electric charge and spin remain those appropriate to the excitation.
Near an isotropic Fermi surface,Residual interactions make the quasiparticle energy depend on the occupations of other quasiparticles, expressed by the Landau quasiparticle energy functional. Its angular components give the Landau parameters controlling density and spin responses. Thus the successful particle picture does not mean that interactions have become zero.
Pauli blocking restricts the final states available for low-energy collisions. In an ordinary three-dimensional Fermi liquid with regular interactions, a representative decay law isAt , the width vanishes faster than , so an excitation becomes increasingly sharp as it approaches the Fermi surface. Its coherent spectral weight is the quasiparticle residue , and the physical electron occupation has a discontinuity of height at zero temperature. Incoherent spectral weight accounts for the remainder. The quasiparticle occupations themselves obey a Fermi-Dirac distribution.
Several leading thermodynamic signatures retain their gas-like form but have interaction-dependent coefficients. In particular,for an isotropic spin-one-half model, with the spin-summed quasiparticle density of states per volume. effective mass changes , while the dimensionless interaction parameters separately change the spin susceptibility and compressibility. Collisionless collective density motion can propagate as zero sound, distinct from the single-particle excitations.
The quasiparticle scattering rate often underlies a low-temperature contribution to metallic electrical resistivity, but a mechanism relaxing electrical electric current is needed. In a clean Galilean-invariant continuum, electron-electron collisions conserve total momentum and do not alone give a finite dc electrical resistivity. Crystal Umklapp scattering or other current-relaxing processes change that conclusion.
Normal liquid helium-3 and many metals motivate the Fermi-liquid framework. Pairing, magnetic ordering or other transitions can reconstruct the low-energy states. Generic interacting one-dimensional fermion systems instead form a different low-energy state, so the three-dimensional quasiparticle conclusions should not simply be transferred to a chain.
Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2017 2 c Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
A normal Fermi liquid has interacting fermions whose low-energy excitations can be followed continuously from those of a Fermi gas, provided no phase transition destroys that correspondence. A Landau quasiparticle is a particle together with the surrounding many-body response. It has the appropriate charge and spin, a renormalized dispersion and a long lifetime close to the Fermi surface. Interactions remain in both the quasiparticle parameters and the interactions between quasiparticles; they have not been discarded.
Near an isotropic Fermi surface,The last relation defines the local isotropic Fermi-liquid effective mass. The Landau quasiparticle energy functional expresses how changing occupations shifts other quasiparticle energies:with normalization of the sum absorbed into . Its angular components give Landau parameters describing collective density and spin response.
The Pauli exclusion principle severely restricts the available final states for low-energy collisions. In an ordinary three-dimensional Fermi liquid with regular interactions,At zero temperature the decay width decreases faster than , making quasiparticles increasingly sharp near the Fermi surface. Their coherent spectral weight is the quasiparticle residue , and the true electron momentum distribution has a discontinuity of height at zero temperature. The rest of the spectral weight is incoherent. The quasiparticle occupation itself still follows a Fermi-Dirac distribution.
The low-temperature electronic heat capacity is linear, , where is the spin-summed quasiparticle density of states. In an isotropic spin-one-half model, the uniform spin susceptibility and compressibility take the formsThus enhanced effective mass and residual interactions can separately change observable responses. The familiar electrical resistivity requires a mechanism relaxing electrical current, such as allowed Umklapp processes; collisions in a perfectly clean Galilean-invariant continuum conserve total momentum and do not alone produce a finite dc resistivity.
Zero sound is a collisionless collective density oscillation sustained by the quasiparticle interaction; ordinary first sound occurs when collisions establish local equilibrium during a cycle. Metals and normal liquid helium-3 supply important examples. The description fails in phases with no sufficiently sharp low-energy quasiparticles, such as generic interacting one-dimensional systems, and must be modified after pairing or another ordering transition.
Past exam of the quantum condensed matter course of the University of Cambridge 2017 4 Solution Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-10-20
Noninteracting spectral line. Treat as a wavevector, so physical crystal momentum is . Write ; an energy zero at the chemical potential can be chosen throughout. The temporal factor of a noninteracting state is . With the Fourier transform convention ,Thus its normalized frequency spectral function isOne should not square the delta distribution as if it were an ordinary finite-time transition amplitude. More precisely, the fermionic retarded Green function is . Its Fourier transform is , whose negative imaginary part divided by is the same delta peak.
Interactions and lifetime. Interactions change the dispersion through the real part of the self-energy and permit decay into other excitations through its imaginary part. In the simplest quasiparticle-pole model, exponential decay of the retarded amplitude givesPerforming the causal integral,The corresponding Lorentzian quasiparticle spectral peak isIts total frequency integral is one. The exponential amplitude lifetime is ; the probability lifetime is . Describing as a scattering rate therefore requires the lifetime convention to be specified. The energy half-width is .
A general interacting electron is more accurately described by near the pole. The coherent peak then integrates to the quasiparticle residue and an incoherent continuum carries the remaining weight. In an energy-unit self-energy convention,Linearizing the real denominator gives and at the pole. The requested unit-weight Lorentzian is the normalized quasiparticle model, not the most general exact interacting spectrum.
Peak position and width. At fixed , put and . Differentiation givesIt is positive for and negative for , so the only maximum is at , with height . Setting to half this height gives . ThereforeIn energy units the maximum is and the half-width is . Frequency dependence of the self-energy would require reconsidering both the shape and peak position.
Fermi gas and Fermi liquid. A noninteracting Fermi gas has a delta-function spectral line at its bare dispersion for every momentum. A normal three-dimensional Fermi liquid has a shifted coherent peak plus incoherent spectral weight; close to the Fermi surface its width scales as . At zero temperature the peak becomes arbitrarily sharp at the Fermi surface, while it broadens farther away. Spectral functions include addition and removal weight; occupied-only photoemission contains an extra Fermi factor.
Photoemission measurement. A photon of known energy ejects an electron. Measure its kinetic energy and emission direction. For binding energy below the Fermi level and the appropriate calibrated work function , conservation of energy givesConservation of momentum parallel to a periodic surface giveswhere is a surface reciprocal-lattice vector. At suitable photon energies the photon momentum can be neglected; at higher energies it must be retained. The surface breaks perpendicular translation symmetry, so the perpendicular crystal momentum generally needs a final-state model. A two-dimensional band can be reconstructed directly from the parallel components.
Within the sudden approximation and electric-dipole approximation, photoemission intensity and spectral function are related byHere is measured relative to the chemical potential. Instrumental resolution convolves the product and inelastic scattering adds background. Thus ARPES maps the occupied electron removal spectral function, weighted by a matrix element; it does not measure the full unoccupied spectrum or an unweighted spectral function automatically. Bright ridges give dispersions, and intrinsic widths give decay information after instrumental effects are removed.
Reading the supplied image. Its bright ridges form a graphene-like cone. The crossing near is the Dirac point, not in general the Fermi level. In the paper's plotted energy coordinates its energy is roughly –. A velocity follows from a branch slope independently of the energy zero:For example, the lower branch moves by about between and . This gives andReading other points changes the estimate by tens of percent. The original exam image has unequal energy increments on nearly equally spaced labelled ticks, so it does not justify a precise fitted velocity. The value is an estimate of the cone slope extrapolated to the Fermi crossing, rather than a measured derivative exactly at a visibly identified Fermi cutoff.
To determine a Fermi energy, first calibrate the Fermi edge, then subtract the chosen reference energy. Neither a Fermi-level marker nor an explicit energy-zero convention is supplied in this crop. If its upper termination near is intended to represent the Fermi cutoff, the conditional graph answer is on that axis, or relative to the Dirac crossing. Identifying the crossing itself as the Fermi energy would incorrectly assume undoped graphene.
The research article cited by the exam identifies this as linearly polarized graphene ARPES and independently states for the substrate-doped sample. That resolves the relative energy when this external calibration is admitted.[ref]
https://hrg.pusan.ac.kr/articles/JPCM_0953-8984_26_33_335501.pdf. Section 3, printed p.2 and figure 1(b): Dirac point below the Fermi energy
The crop alone does not uniquely fix an absolute Fermi energy; the source-supported relative value and the conditional axis reading should be distinguished.Within a stable normal Fermi liquid, the low-energy states are described by long-lived Landau quasiparticles and holes in a thin shell about the Fermi surface; the Pauli exclusion principle suppresses their decay. Expanding the energy about the equilibrium occupations gives the one-quasiparticle dispersion relation at first order and the interaction between occupation changes at second order, namely the Landau quasiparticle energy functional. For a smooth interaction, radial deviations in that interaction may be neglected at leading order, leaving its angular dependence; higher occupation terms contribute higher powers of the small shell thickness. Collective occupation deformations are included in the same description. The sufficiency claim is conditional on the normal Fermi liquid regime, and on supplementing this static energy functional with dynamics when required: it is not a description of arbitrary low-energy phases such as a superconductor or non-Fermi liquid.
Quantum fluid Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
A quantum fluid is a fluid whose collective behavior requires quantum mechanics, particularly when the thermal de Broglie wavelength becomes comparable with particle spacing. Exchange statistics and interactions then affect the state in ways that a dilute classical particle model cannot capture. Low temperature favors this regime, but temperature alone is insufficient without a density and particle-mass scale.
Superfluid helium-4, degenerate fermionic matter described by a Fermi liquid, and dilute ultracold atomic gases provide different realizations. A quantum fluid need not be a superfluid, and quantum degeneracy does not by itself remove dissipation. Measurements of heat capacity, collective waves and response to flow distinguish the relevant states. The useful organizing question is which low-energy excitations carry energy, momentum and conserved particle number, rather than whether individual particles merely have small kinetic energies.
For an isotropic spinless continuum Fermi liquid with the Principle of Galilean relativity, let be the total density of states and use a Landau quasiparticle energy functional whose double sum has no explicit . ThenIndeed, a small boost has radial displacement . The one-quasiparticle term costs , and the quadratic interaction multiplies that by , since . Matching the Galilean boost energy of an interacting gas proves the formula. With Fourier series , the angular average is . If the functional instead contains , use its intensive kernel and the density of states per area.
William Russell Abel Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
An experimental physicist who coauthored the 1966 zero sound propagation experiment with Ansel Cochran Anderson and John Charles Wheatley. Sound measurements in very cold helium-3 tested whether collective density motion survives in the collisionless regime predicted for a Fermi liquid.[ref]
Propagation of Zero Sound in Liquid He3 at Low Temperatures by William Russell Abel and others. Byline and zero-sound propagation study


