Stephan Stetina

From a complex scalar field to the two-fluid picture of superfluidity

The hydrodynamic description of a superfluid is usually based on a two-fluid picture. We compute the basic properties of the relativistic two-fluid system from the underlying microscopic physics of a relativistic \varphi^4 complex scalar field theory. We work at nonzero but small temperature and weak coupling, and we neglect dissipation. We clarify the relationship between different formulations of the two-fluid model, and how they are parameterized in terms of partly redundant current and momentum 4-vectors. As an application, we compute the velocities of first and second sound at small temperatures and in the presence of a superflow. While our results are of a very general nature, we also comment on their interpretation as a step towards the hydrodynamics of the color-flavor locked state of quark matter, which, in particular in the presence of kaon condensation, appears to be a complicated multi-component fluid.

Instabilities in relativistic two-component (super)fluids

We study two-fluid systems with nonzero fluid velocities and compute their sound modes, which indicate various instabilities. For the case of two zero-temperature superfluids we employ a microscopic field-theoretical model of two coupled bosonic fields, including an entrainment coupling and a nonentrainment coupling. We analyze the onset of the various instabilities systematically and point out that the dynamical two-stream instability can occur only beyond Landau’s critical velocity, i.e., in an already energetically unstable regime. A qualitative difference is found for the case of two normal fluids, where certain transverse modes suffer a two-stream instability in an energetically stable regime if there is entrainment between the fluids. Since we work in a fully relativistic setup, our results are very general and are of potential relevance for (super)fluids in neutron stars and, in the nonrelativistic limit of our results, in the laboratory.

Role reversal in first and second sound in a relativistic superfluid

Relativistic superfluidity at arbitrary temperature, chemical potential and (uniform) superflow is discussed within a self-consistent field-theoretical approach. Our starting point is a complex scalar field with a

Meson condensation and critical point in dense quark matter

\varphi^4

Erratum: On-shell effective field theory: A systematic tool to compute power corrections to the hard thermal loops [Phys. Rev. D 94 , 025017 (2016)]

interaction, for which we calculate the 2-particle-irreducible effective action in the Hartree approximation. With this underlying microscopic theory, we can obtain the two-fluid picture of a superfluid, and compute properties such as the superfluid density and the entrainment coefficient for all temperatures below the critical temperature for superfluidity. We compute the critical velocity, taking into account the full self-consistent effect of the temperature and superflow on the quasiparticle dispersion. We also discuss first and second sound modes and how first (second) sound evolves from a density (temperature) wave at low temperatures to a temperature (density) wave at high temperatures. This role reversal is investigated for ultra-relativistic and near-non-relativistic systems for zero and nonzero superflow. For nonzero superflow, we also observe a role reversal as a function of the direction of the sound wave.

From field theory to superfluid hydrodynamics of dense quark matter

The phase structure of dense QCD matter is studied based on the Ginzburg‐Landau approach. In three flavor massless quark matter, one can show that a novel entanglement between chiral condensate and diquark condensate via the axial anomaly gives rise to a critical point at moderate density. We further investigate the effect of nonzero strange quark mass by taking into account a possible meson condensate. Then the fate of the critical point is discussed.