Absorption and emission of a collective excitation by a fermionic quasiparticle in a Fermi superfluid

Abstract

We study the process of absorption or emission of a bosonic collective excitation by a fermionic quasiparticle in a superfluid of paired fermions. From the random phase approximation equation of motion of the bosonic excitation annihilation operator, we obtain an expression of the coupling amplitude of this process, which is limited neither to resonant processes nor to the long wavelength limit. We confirm our result by independently deriving it in the functional integral approach using the gaussian fluctuation approximation, and by comparing it in the long wavelength limit to the quantum hydrodynamic result. Lastly, we give a straightforward application of the coupling amplitude we obtain by calculating the lifetime of the bosonic excitations of an arbitrary wave number. We find a mode quality factor that decreases from its maximum at low wave numbers and vanishes when the bosonic branch hits the continuum of fermionic biexcitations.