Impurity in a zero-temperature three-dimensional Fermi gas

Abstract

We consider an impurity in a sea of zero-temperature fermions uniformly distributed throughout the space. The impurity scatters on fermions. On average, the momentum of impurity decreases with time as ${t}^{\ensuremath{-}1/(d+1)}$ in $d$ dimensions, and the momentum distribution acquires a scaling form in the long-time limit. We solve the Lorentz-Boltzmann equation for the scaled momentum distribution of the impurity in three dimensions. The solution is a combination of confluent hypergeometric functions. In two spatial dimensions, the Lorentz-Boltzmann equation is analytically intractable, so we merely extract a few exact predictions about asymptotic behaviors when the scaled momentum of the impurity is small or large.

Locations

• Physical review. A/Physical review, A - View
• arXiv (Cornell University) - View - PDF