Anomalous Doppler effect in superfluid and supersolid atomic gases

Abstract

By employing the formalism of hydrodynamics, we derive novel analytic predictions for the Doppler effect in superfluids with broken Galilean invariance and hosting persistent currents at zero temperature. We consider two scenarios: when Galilean invariance is broken explicitly (by external potentials) and spontaneously, as it happens in a supersolid. In the former case, the presence of a stationary current affects the propagation of sound via an anomalous Doppler term proportional to the density derivative of the superfluid fraction. In supersolids, where, according to Goldstone theorem, distinct sounds of hybrid superfluid and crystal nature can propagate, the Doppler effect can be very different for each sound. Quantitative estimates of the Doppler shifts are obtained for Bose-Einstein condensed atomic gases, described by Gross-Pitaevskii theory. The estimates are obtained both calculating the thermodynamic parameters entering the hydrodynamic results, and from full time-dependent simulations.