arXiv subjects

Rafael Krichevsky

Publications and source records attributed to Rafael Krichevsky.

3 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2020

Solidity without inhomogeneity: Perfectly homogeneous, weakly coupled, UV-complete solids

Solid-like behavior at low energies and long distances is usually associated with the spontaneous breaking of spatial translations at microscopic scales, as in the case of a lattice of atoms. We exhibit three quantum field theories that are renormalizable, Poincaré invariant, and weakly coupled, and that admit states that on the one hand are perfectly homogeneous down to arbitrarily short scales, and on the other hand have the same infrared dynamics as isotropic solids. All three examples presented here lead to the same peculiar solid at low energies, featuring very constrained interactions and transverse phonons that always propagate at the speed of light. In particular, they violate the well known $c_L^2 > \frac{4}{3} c_T^2$ bound, thus showing that it is possible to have a healthy renormalizable theory that at low energies exhibits a negative bulk modulus (we discuss how the associated instabilities are absent in the presence of suitable boundary conditions). We do not know whether such peculiarities are unavoidable features of large scale solid-like behavior in the absence of short scale inhomogeneities, or whether they simply reflect the limits of our imagination.

hep-th↗

arXiv2019

The gravitational mass carried by sound waves

We show that the commonly accepted statement that sound waves do not transport mass is only true at linear order. Using effective field theory techniques, we confirm the result found in [1] for zero-temperature superfluids, and extend it to the case of solids and ordinary fluids. We show that, in fact, sound waves do carry mass---in particular, gravitational mass. This implies that a sound wave not only is affected by gravity but also generates a tiny gravitational field, an aspect not appreciated thus far. Our findings are valid for non-relativistic media as well, and could have intriguing experimental implications.

gr-qc↗

arXiv2017

Vortex precession in trapped superfluids from effective field theory

We apply a recently developed effective string theory for vortex lines to the case of two-dimensional trapped superfluids. We do not assume a perturbative microscopic description for the superfluid, but only a gradient expansion for the long-distance hydrodynamical description and for the trapping potential. For any regular trapping potential, we compute the spatial dependence of the superfluid density and the orbital frequency and trajectory of an off-center vortex. Our results are fully relativistic, and in the non-relativistic limit reduce to known results based on the Gross-Pitaevskii model. In our formalism, the leading effect in the non-relativistic limit arises from two simple Feynman diagrams in which the vortex interacts with the trapping potential through the exchange of hydrodynamical modes.

hep-th↗