2014/06/30 by Ben Gripaios, Dave Sutherland · 34 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Classical mechanics #Open quantum system #Physics #Quantum #Quantum Electrodynamics and Casimir Effect #Quantum dissipation #Quantum dynamics #Quantum field theory #Quantum fluid #Quantum gravity #Quantum mechanics #Quantum process #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics #Relationship between string theory and quantum field theory #cond-mat.other #hep-ph #hep-th #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.114.071601
published in Physical Review Letters 114(7), 071601 (American Physical Society) · 5 pages, 2 figures and 1 table. v2: Added references. v3: Changed title to match published version
openalex publication_date 2015/02/18 · arxiv created 2015/04/23 · arxiv updated 2015/04/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
The quantum theory of fields is largely based on studying perturbations around noninteracting, or free, field theories, which correspond to a collection of quantum-mechanical harmonic oscillators. The quantum theory of an ordinary fluid is "freer", in the sense that the noninteracting theory also contains an infinite collection of quantum-mechanical free particles, corresponding to vortex modes. By computing a variety of correlation functions at tree and loop level, we give evidence that a quantum perfect fluid can be consistently formulated as a low-energy, effective field theory. We speculate that the quantum behavior is radically different from both classical fluids and quantum fields.