Landau critical velocity in weakly interacting Bose gases

Abstract

The flow of a uniform Bose gas at speeds greater than the Landau critical velocity, v_c, does not necessarily destroy superfluidity, but rather need only lead to a decrease of the superfluid mass density, ρ_s. Analyzing a weakly interacting Bose gas with a finite range interparticle interaction that leads to a Landau critical velocity at non-zero quasiparticle momentum, we explicitly construct the (non-uniform) condensate for fluid flow faster than v_c and calculate the accompanying decrease in ρ_s. We briefly comment on the relation of the physics to other problems in superfluids, e.g., solitons, and vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates, and critical currents in superconductors.

5 pages, 1 figure