The temperature evolution of the shear viscosity in a unitary Fermi gas

TL;DR

This study uses quantum Monte Carlo methods to calculate the shear viscosity of a unitary Fermi gas at finite temperatures, revealing violations of hydrodynamic bounds at low temperatures linked to Cooper pairing.

Contribution

It provides an ab initio calculation of shear viscosity in a unitary Fermi gas and uncovers the violation of hydrodynamic bounds related to pairing phenomena.

Findings

Violates hydrodynamic shear viscosity bound at low temperatures

Violation correlates with the onset of Cooper pairing

Shear viscosity exhibits a sharp zero-frequency structure

Abstract

We present an ab initio determination of the shear viscosity for the unitary Fermi gas based on finite temperature quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) calculations and the Kubo linear-response formalism. The results are confronted with the bound for the shear viscosity originating from hydrodynamic fluctuations. Assuming smoothness of the frequency dependent shear viscosity eta(omega), we show that the bound is violated in the low temperature regime and the violation occurs simultaneously with the onset of the Cooper paring in the system. In order to preserve the hydrodynamic bound in QMC eta(omega) has to possess a sharp structure located in the vicinity of zero frequency which is not resolved by an analytic continuation procedure.