Moment of Inertia of Superfluid Many-Fermion Systems

The effects of possible superfluidity on the cranking moment of a large many-fermion system moving under periodic boundary conditions are investigated within the framework of the theory of superconductivity recently formulated by Bogolyubov. The Hamiltonian is initially subjected to Bogolyubov's general unitary transformation. The collective excitations of the fermions are then considered in the usual pair approximation; the appropriate cranking terms are linear in the boson pair operators. On performing a unitary transformation which transforms away these linear terms, one obtains an expression for the moment of inertia of the system which includes both the effects of possible superfluidity and collective excitation. This expression, by virtue of its being stationary with respect to arbitrary variations in the amplitude associated with the latter unitary transformation, is then utilized as a variational principle for the moment of inertia. For the normal state, the result previously obtained by the author, that the moment of inertia has the rigid value, is rederived in more compact form. For the superfluid state, one finds that collective excitations effect a marked increase in the superfluid moment at intermediate coupling strengths although the resulting moment is still quite small compared to the rigid value. In contrast to the normal state case, where particle-hole pairs play a major role, this increase is almost entirely due to excitations consisting of particle-pairs or hole-pairs. The precise magnitude of the apparent resonance in the moment produced by the $d$-wave part of the cranking interaction is dependent to some extent on the features of the particle-particle potential which leads to the superfluid state. Variational expressions for the moment are exhibited for both Yukawa and delta-function shell potentials. These results are identical in charged and neutral Fermi systems. A calculation of the cranking moment at finite temperatures is presented in an Appendix along with an interpretation of it in terms of Bardeen's two-fluid model of superconductivity.