Trapped phonons

Abstract

We analyze the effect of restricted geometries on the contribution of Nambu-Goldstone bosons (phonons) to the shear viscosity, $\eta$, of a superfluid. For illustrative purpose we examine a simplified system consisting of a circular boundary of radius $R$, confining a two-dimensional rarefied gas of phonons. Considering the Maxwell-type conditions, we show that phonons that are not in equilibrium with the boundary and that are not specularly reflected exert a shear stress on the boundary. In this case it is possible to define an effective (ballistic) shear viscosity coefficient $\eta \propto \rho_{\rm ph} \chi R$, where $\rho_{\rm ph}$ is the density of phonons and $\chi$ is a parameter which characterizes the type of scattering at the boundary. For an optically trapped superfluid our results corroborate the findings of Refs. \cite{Mannarelli:2012su, Mannarelli:2012eg}, which imply that at very low temperature the shear viscosity correlates with the size of the optical trap and decreases with decreasing temperature.