Hydrodynamics of charged two-dimensional Dirac systems II: the role of collective modes

TL;DR

This paper investigates the hydrodynamic behavior of ultraclean two-dimensional Dirac electrons, highlighting the dual role of Coulomb interactions in facilitating local equilibration and enabling collective excitations like plasmons that influence transport properties.

Contribution

It develops a quantum kinetic framework incorporating collective modes and Coulomb interactions, deriving conservation laws and transport contributions in 2D Dirac systems.

Findings

Coulomb interactions enable fast local equilibration and collective excitations.

Plasmons significantly affect thermoelectric and viscous transport properties.

Theoretical foundation for coupled electron-plasmon hydrodynamics in Dirac materials.

Abstract

We study the hydrodynamic properties of ultraclean interacting two-dimensional Dirac electrons with Keldysh quantum field theory. We study it from a weak-coupling and a strong-coupling perspective. We demonstrate that long-range Coulomb interactions play two independent roles: (i) they provide the inelastic and momentum-conserving scattering mechanism that leads to fast local equilibration; (ii) they facilitate the emergence of collective excitations, for instance plasmons, that contribute to transport properties on equal footing with electrons. Our approach is based on an effective field theory of the collective field coupled to electrons. Within a conserving approximation for the coupled system we derive a set of coupled quantum-kinetic equations. This builds the foundation of the derivation of the Boltzmann equations for the interacting system of electrons and plasmons. From this, we explicitly derive all the conservation laws and identify the extra contributions of energy density and pressure from the plasmons. We demonstrate that plasmons show up in thermo-electric transport properties as well as in quantities that enter the energy-momentum tensor, such as the viscosity. In a parallel paper we discuss some of the phenomenology of the corresponding hydrodynamic equations with an eye on thermo-electric transport properties.