Critical velocity of a mobile impurity in one-dimensional quantum liquids

Abstract

We study the notion of superfluid critical velocity in one spatial dimension. It is shown that for heavy impurities with mass $M$ exceeding a critical mass $M_{\mathrm{c}}$, the dispersion develops periodic metastable branches resulting in dramatic changes of dynamics in the presence of an external driving force. In contrast to smooth Bloch Oscillations for $M<M_{\mathrm{c}}$, a heavy impurity climbs metastable branches until it reaches a branch termination point or undergoes a random tunneling event, both leading to an abrupt change in velocity and an energy loss. This is predicted to lead to a non-analytic dependence of the impurity drift velocity on small forces.

5 pages, 2 figures; New version with Supplemental Material (3 pages, 6 figures); Accepted to PRL