Shear sound of two-dimensional Fermi liquids

TL;DR

This paper predicts a shear sound mode in two-dimensional Fermi liquids, analogous to shear waves in elastic media, which persists under Coulomb interactions and near critical points, expanding understanding of collective excitations.

Contribution

It introduces the shear sound mode in 2D Fermi liquids, detailing its properties, damping, and behavior under Coulomb forces, and connects bosonization with classical Landau theory.

Findings

Shear sound mode exists in 2D Fermi liquids with specific conditions.

Mode remains linearly dispersing despite Coulomb interactions.

Spectrum of excitations mapped using a 1D tight-binding model.

Abstract

We study the appearance of a sharp collective mode which features transverse current fluctuations within the bosonization approach to interacting two-dimensional Fermi liquids. This mode is analogous to the shear sound modes in elastic media, and, unlike the conventional zero sound mode, it is damped in weakly interacting Fermi liquids and only separates away from the particle-hole continuum when the quasiparticle mass becomes twice the transport mass $m^* \gtrsim 2 m$. The shear sound should be present in a large class of interacting charged and neutral Fermi liquids especially those proximate to critical points where the quasiparticle mass diverges. In metals this mode remains linearly dispersing in the presence of the long-ranged Coulomb force, unlike the conventional zero sound mode which becomes the plasma mode. We also detail a quick path between bosonization and classical Landau's Fermi liquid theory by constructing a mapping between the solutions of the classical kinetic equation and the quantized bosonic eigenmodes. By further mapping the kinetic equation into a 1D tight-binding model we solve for the entire spectrum of collective and incoherent particle-hole excitations of Fermi liquids with non-zero $F_0$ and $F_1$ Landau parameters.