Landau parameter Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
For a three-dimensional isotropic unpolarized spin-one-half Fermi liquid, define and . Dimensionless Landau parameters use the spin-summed density of states per volume:
is a Legendre polynomial; label spin symmetry. No extra multiplies this expansion.[ref] The superscript on is unrelated to the dimensionless wave speed below.
Landau quasiparticles describe the long-lived low-energy excitations of an interacting normal Fermi liquid. Starting from a free Fermi gas, imagine switching on interactions without changing the phase or destroying the one-to-one labelling of low-energy states. The resulting excitation carries the quantum numbers of a dressed particle but has a renormalized energy and interactions with other excitations. Its microscopic wavefunction need not resemble a bare electron state. The occupied momenta define a Fermi surface, and the quasiparticle energy measured from the chemical potential vanishes on that surface.
The Landau quasiparticle energy functional expresses the change near equilibrium in terms of occupation changes:
Differentiation gives the energy of one quasiparticle in the distorted distribution. This is a phenomenological expansion around the true interacting ground state, not the assertion that its total energy equals that of independent particles. For an isotropic system, spin-symmetric and spin-antisymmetric components of are expanded in Legendre polynomials. Multiplication by the appropriate Fermi-surface density of states defines dimensionless Landau parameters . The original formulation relates a change in the distribution to the energy shift.[ref]
Pauli blocking makes the low-energy excitations sharp. The phase space for a quasiparticle to scatter while creating another particle–hole pair shrinks as the Fermi surface is approached, giving the regular three-dimensional low-energy Fermi-liquid quasiparticle lifetime
Thus at zero temperature its width is small compared with its excitation energy. The single-particle spectral function has a pole with quasiparticle residue , generally less than one, and an incoherent remainder. In a conventional Fermi liquid the occupation distribution has a discontinuity of height at the Fermi surface, rather than a unit free-particle step.
For an isotropic three-dimensional system, define to include both spins. The quasiparticle density of states determines the low-temperature electronic heat capacity, . In the usual Landau-parameter normalization, the spin response is modified by and the compressibility by . In a Galilean-invariant continuum, ; that particular relation must not be imposed unchanged on a crystal band. A denominator approaching zero signals a possible instability of the assumed normal state.
The same interaction functional and a kinetic equation describe collective zero sound when the excitation frequency exceeds the collision rate. Ordinary first sound is the collision-dominated hydrodynamic limit. The theory organizes thermodynamics, response and transport through a small set of measured effective parameters while explaining why interactions coexist with long-lived fermionic excitations. It is not applicable without qualification in phases where the Fermi-liquid quasiparticle pole disappears or a gap opens over the relevant Fermi surface.
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 is
At , 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.
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 forms
Thus 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.
Use the total density of states and from part (b). In the paper's double-sum convention, has units of energy and scales as . Define its first angular moment by
This convention matters: the Landau quasiparticle energy functional written with an explicit instead uses the intensive kernel .
At zero temperature, the displayed functional is the change in ; a true Galilean boost preserves , so . For a radial displacement , the first term in the Landau quasiparticle energy functional becomes
The oriented radial integral also works for negative : removing occupied levels below the chemical potential costs positive energy. Substituting and using gives
The exact second-order correction to the boundary is unnecessary here because the unperturbed excitation energy vanishes on the Fermi surface; it changes this term only beyond quadratic order. It must nevertheless be understood when identifying with a fixed-particle number energy change.
For the quadratic interaction term, the first-order occupation change alone suffices. The radial Dirac delta function integrals give
Put . The remaining angular integral uses
so only the first cosine component of the interaction survives. Since ,
Adding both contributions and matching the bare-mass result of part (a) yields the two-dimensional Landau effective-mass relation:
Equivalently, using the density of states per unit area ,
If dimensionless Landau parameters are defined through the Fourier series , then and
Defining the cosine expansion with an extra factor of two would instead absorb that factor into ; the angular-integral formula above fixes the convention unambiguously. The physical content is that interaction changes accompanying a moving Fermi sea compensate the renormalized quasiparticle velocity, so the total boost energy is governed by the bare mass. For an interaction independent of angle, and this consistency condition requires .