2006/07/31 by Eldad Bettelheim, E. Bettelheim, Alexander G. Abanov +2 · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Atomic and Subatomic Physics Research #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #cond-mat.mes-hall #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.97.246402
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 246402 (2006) · 5 pages, 1 figure, revtex4, prl
arxiv created 2006/08/21 · openalex publication_date 2006/12/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A semiclassical wave packet propagating in a dissipationless Fermi gas inevitably enters a "gradient catastrophe" regime, where an initially smooth front develops large gradients and undergoes a dramatic shock-wave phenomenon. The nonlinear effects in electronic transport are due to the curvature of the electronic spectrum at the Fermi surface. They can be probed by a sudden switching of a local potential. In equilibrium, this process produces a large number of particle-hole pairs, a phenomenon closely related to the orthogonality catastrophe. We study a generalization of this phenomenon to the nonequilibrium regime and show how the orthogonality catastrophe cures the gradient catastrophe, by providing a dispersive regularization mechanism.