Viscosity-entropy ratio of the unitary Fermi gas from zero-temperature elementary excitations

Abstract

We investigate the low-temperature behavior of the ratio between the shear viscosity \eta and the entropy density s in the unitary Fermi gas by using a model based on the zero-temperature spectra of both bosonic collective modes and fermonic single-particle excitations. Our theoretical curve of \eta/s as a function of the temperature T is in qualitative agreement with the experimental data of trapped ultracold 6Li atomic gases. We find the minimum value \eta/s \simeq 0.44 (in units of \hbar/k_B) at the temperature T/T_F \simeq 0.27, with T_F the Fermi temperature.

Comments: 10 pages, 2 figures, prepared for the special issue "Correlations in Quantum Gases" of J. Low Temp, Phys