Second wind of the Dulong-Petit Law at a quantum critical point

Abstract

Renewed interest in 3He physics has been stimulated by experimental observation of non-Fermi-liquid behavior of dense 3He films at low temperatures. Abnormal behavior of the specific heat C(T) of two-dimensional liquid 3He is demonstrated in the occurrence of a T-independent term in C(T). To uncover the origin of this phenomenon, we have considered the group velocity of transverse zero sound propagating in a strongly correlated Fermi liquid. For the first time, it is shown that if two-dimensional liquid 3He is located in the vicinity of the quantum critical point associated with a divergent quasiparticle effective mass, the group velocity depends strongly on temperature and vanishes as T is lowered toward zero. The predicted vigorous dependence of the group velocity can be detected in experimental measurements on liquid 3He films. We have demonstrated that the contribution to the specific heat coming from the boson part of the free energy due to the transverse zero-sound mode follows the Dulong-Petit Law. In the case of two-dimensional liquid 3He, the specific heat becomes independent of temperature at some characteristic temperature of a few mK.

arXiv comment5 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (5)

• Scaling Behavior of Heavy Fermion Metals
• Topology of the Fermi Surface Beyond the Quantum Critical Point
• Curie law, entropy excess, and superconductivity in heavy fermion metals and other strongly interacting Fermi liquids
• Universal Behavior of Two-Dimensional 3He at Low Temperatures
• Ground state instability in systems of strongly interacting fermions

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Adaptation of the Landau-Migdal Quasiparticle Pattern to Strongly Correlated Fermi Systems
• Quasi-classical physics and T-linear resistivity in both strongly correlated and ordinary metals
• Fermion condensation, $T$-linear resistivity and Planckian limit
• Topological disorder triggered by interaction-induced flattening of electron spectra in solids
• Flat Bands and Enigma of Metamagnetic Quantum Critical Regime in Sr3Ru2O7
• Fate of the Wiedemann-Franz law near quantum critical points of electron systems in solids
• Transport properties of strongly correlated Fermi systems