How heat propagates in liquid 3He

Abstract

In Landau’s Fermi liquid picture, transport is governed by scattering between quasi-particles. The normal liquid 3He conforms to this picture but only at very low temperature. Here, we show that the deviation from the standard behavior is concomitant with the fermion-fermion scattering time falling below the Planckian time, ℏkBT and the thermal diffusivity of this quantum liquid is bounded by a minimum set by fundamental physical constants and observed in classical liquids. This points to collective excitations (a sound mode) as carriers of heat. We propose that this mode has a wavevector of 2kF and a mean free path equal to the de Broglie thermal length. This would provide an additional conducting channel with a T 1/2 temperature dependence, matching what is observed by experiments. The experimental data from 0.007 K to 3 K can be accounted for, with a margin of 10%, if thermal conductivity is the sum of two contributions: one by quasi-particles (varying as the inverse of temperature) and another by sound (following the square root of temperature).