Damping of phonons in one-dimensional quantum fluids

Abstract:

Collective excitations in one-dimensional (1D) quantum fluids are expected to propagate almost without dissipation. Here we directly excite phonon modes in a weakly interacting 1D Bose gas and study their time evolution. In the linear response regime, damping is surprisingly fast and quantitatively follows the non-analytic scaling predicted by Andreev’s hydrodynamic description. For stronger excitations, we observe a crossover to a highly nonlinear regime characterized by wave breaking, captured by the finite-temperature nonlinear Schrödinger evolution. Our results resolve a long-standing question on the fate of phonons in 1D Bose gases, and open new pathways to study non-linear relaxation in quantum many-body systems.

F. Cataldini, N. Bazhan, J. Sabino, P. Schüttelkopf, M. Tajik, F. S. Møller, S.-C. Ji, S. Erne, I.
Mazets, J. Schmiedmayer, „Damping of phonons in one-dimensional quantum fluids“, 17. Nov.
2025, arXiv:2511.13681 (2025).

https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.13681

Related to Project A03