Dissipative fluid dynamics for the dilute Fermi gas at unitarity: Free expansion and rotation

Abstract

We investigate the expansion dynamics of a dilute Fermi gas at unitarity in the context of dissipative fluid dynamics. Our aim is to quantify the effects of shear viscosity on the time evolution of the system. We compare exact numerical solutions of the equations of viscous hydrodynamics to various approximations that have been proposed in the literature. Our main findings are: i) Shear viscosity leads to characteristic features in the expansion dynamics; ii) a quantitative description of these effects has to include reheating; iii) dissipative effects are not sensitive to the equation of state P(n,T) as long as the universal relation P=(2/3)E is satisfied; iv) the expansion dynamics mainly constrains the cloud average of the shear viscosity.

28 pages, 13 figures