Second-order hydrodynamics for fermionic cold atoms: Detailed analysis of transport coefficients and relaxation times

TL;DR

This paper derives second-order hydrodynamics for fermionic cold atoms using the renormalization group method, providing microscopic expressions for transport coefficients and relaxation times, and analyzing their temperature and scattering-length dependencies.

Contribution

It introduces a faithful derivation of second-order hydrodynamics without ansatz, including explicit microscopic formulas for transport coefficients and relaxation times for cold fermionic atoms.

Findings

Transport coefficients increase as temperature decreases due to Pauli blocking.

Transport coefficients decrease with increasing s-wave scattering length, vanishing at unitarity.

The relation τ_π=η/P holds well, but τ_J deviates significantly from the approximation.

Abstract

We give a detailed derivation of the second-order (local) hydrodynamics for Boltzmann equation with an external force by using the renormalization group method. In this method, we solve the Boltzmann equation faithfully to extract the hydrodynamics without recourse to any ansatz. Our method leads to microscopic expressions of not only all the transport coefficients that are of the same form as those in Chapman-Enskog method but also those of the viscous relaxation times $\tau_i$ that admit physically natural interpretations. As an example, we apply our microscopic expressions to calculate the transport coefficients and the relaxation times of the cold fermionic atoms in a quantitative way, where the transition probability in the collision term is given explicitly in terms of the $s$-wave scattering length $a_s$. We thereby discuss the quantum statistical effects, temperature dependence, and scattering-length dependence of the first-order transport coefficients and the viscous relaxation times: It is shown that as the temperature is lowered, the transport coefficients and the relaxation times increase rapidly because Pauli principle acts effectively. On the other hand, as $a_s$ is increased, these quantities decrease and become vanishingly small at unitarity because of the strong coupling. The numerical calculation shows that the relation $\tau_\pi=\eta/P$, which is derived in the relaxation-time approximation and used in most of literature without almost any foundation, turns out to be satisfied quite well, while the similar relation for the relaxation time $\tau_J$ of the heat conductivity is satisfied only approximately with a considerable error.