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(Received 29 September 2018; revised manuscript received 18 December 2018; published 1 March 2019)
We show that the commonly accepted statement that sound waves do not transport mass is only true at
linear order. Using effective field theory techniques, we confirm the result found by Nicolis and Penco
[Phys. Rev. B 97, 134516 (2018)] for zero-temperature superfluids, and extend it to the case of solids and
ordinary fluids. We show that, in fact, sound waves do carry mass—in particular, gravitational mass. This
implies that a sound wave not only is affected by gravity but also generates a tiny gravitational field, an
aspect not appreciated thus far. Our findings are valid for nonrelativistic media as well, and could have
intriguing experimental implications.
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.084501
Introduction.—It is usually said that sound waves do not source of this gravitational field travels with the phonon.
transport mass. They carry momentum and energy, but it is This point was not appreciated in Ref. [1].
an accepted fact that the net mass transported by a sound Thus, in a very physical sense, the phonon carries
wave vanishes. Here, we question this “fact.” (negative) mass. Moreover, this is not due to the usual
A first indication that sound waves can carry a nonzero equivalence of mass and energy in relativity: the effect
net mass is contained in the results of Ref. [1]: there, using survives in the nonrelativistic limit. And, finally, it is not a
an effective point-particle theory, it was shown that quantum effect, because the formalism of Ref. [1] applies
phonons in zero-temperature superfluids have an effective unaltered to classical waves.
coupling to gravity, which depends solely on their energy In this Letter, we confirm this result by computing
and on the superfluid’s equation of state. For ordinary explicitly the mass carried by a classical sound wave
equations of state, this coupling corresponds to a negative packet. As we will see, from the wave mechanics stand-
effective gravitational mass: in the presence of an external point, the fact that such a mass is nonzero is a nonlinear
gravitational field, such as that of Earth, a phonon’s effect, and that is why, from a linearized analysis, we
trajectory bends upwards. usually infer that sound waves do not carry mass. We also
Now this effect is completely equivalent to standard generalize the result to sound waves in ordinary fluids and
refraction: in the presence of gravity, the pressure of the to longitudinal and transverse sound waves in solids. We
superfluid depends on depth, and so does the speed of find that, in the nonrelativistic limit, the mass carried by a
sound. As a result, in the geometric acoustics limit, sound sound wave traveling in these media is its energy E times a
waves do not propagate along straight lines. Because of factor that only depends on the medium’s equation of state:
this, one might be tempted to dismiss any interpretation of
this phenomenon in terms of “gravitational mass.” d log cs E
M¼− ; ð1Þ
However, since, in the formalism of Ref. [1], the effect d log ρm c2s
is due to a coupling with gravity in the effective Lagrangian
of the phonon, the same coupling must affect the field where ρm is the medium’s mass density and cs the speed of
equation for gravity: the (tiny) effective gravitational mass the sound wave under consideration. (For solids, the correct
of the phonon generates a (tiny) gravitational field. The formula is a minor generalization of this.) The derivatives in
Eq. (1) are standard adiabatic ones. Notice that the same
logarithmic derivative as in Eq. (1) appears in the general
formula for a sound wave’s radiation pressure [2].
A final qualification: for excitations propagating in a
Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of Poincaré-invariant vacuum, the invariant mass is a funda-
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to mental, completely unambiguous quantity, whose value
the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, also directly determines the gap. Not so in a medium that
and DOI. Funded by SCOAP3. breaks boost invariance: there, the dispersion relation EðpÞ
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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 122, 084501 (2019)
μnc2 c2 2μcs dcs 2 same result can also be recovered in quantum field theory
T 00 ¼ 2 π_ þ 2 1 − 2 π_ for single-phonon states.
cs 2cs c dμ
Solids and fluids.—As mentioned in the Introduction, the
c2 2c2s ⃗ 2
− 1 − 2 ð∇πÞ ; ð7Þ bending of a sound wave’s trajectory in the presence of
2 c gravity is equivalent to Snell’s law. In light of this, given the
generality of Snell’s law, we expect sound waves to interact
where n ¼ dP=dμ is the number density. with gravity in fluids and solids much in the same way as
To find the mass transported by the sound wave, we they do in superfluids. We will again analyze phonons in a
integrate T 00 over a volume containing the wave packet and solid from an effective field theory viewpoint. Moreover,
average it over a time interval τ much larger than the typical since in the EFT language a fluid is simply a solid with an
oscillation time, τ ≫ 1=ω. The linear term in T 00 can enhanced symmetry (see, e.g., Refs. [4,19]), the results of
receive contributions both from the linearized wave packet this section extend straightforwardly to fluids as well. The
π ð1Þ and from the nonlinear correction π ð2Þ . The contribu- effective field theory of solids has been developed in
tion from π ð1Þ vanishes, since it is a total time derivative and Refs. [13,14,19], and we will in large part follow their
we are integrating on a time interval over which the wave notation.
packet averages to zero. The contribution from π ð2Þ The EFT for a three-dimensional solid can be built out of
vanishes as well: the nonlinear source on the rhs of three scalar fields, ϕI (I ¼ 1, 2, 3), representing the
Eq. (5), in general, contains both oscillatory terms as well comoving coordinates of the solid’s volume elements. In
as constant ones, but the time derivative gets rid of the the ground state, they can be aligned with the physical
latter. This means that π ð2Þ is purely oscillatory as well, and coordinates, hϕI ðxÞi ¼ b1=3 I
0 x , where b0 is a dimensionless
hence its time derivative vanishes in our time average. free parameter representing the degree of compression or
As far as the quadratic terms in T 00 are concerned, only dilation of the solid. (The cubic root convention has been
the linearized wave packet π ð1Þ can contribute to this order chosen for later convenience.)
in perturbation theory. We can relate their volume integral The low energy effective action is a generic function of
and time average to the energy E of our wave packet, that the combination BIJ ≡ ∂ μ ϕI ∂ μ ϕJ that is invariant under the
is, the value of the free Hamiltonian. The Hamiltonian rotational symmetries of the solid, which act on the I, J
density that characterizes the ground state of a zero- indices. For simplicity, we focus on solids that are isotropic
temperature superfluid as well as its excitations is at large distances (generalizing our analysis to a solid
T 00 − μJ0 , where Jμ ¼ 2P0 ðXÞ∂ μ ϕ is the Noether current with discrete rotational symmetry is straightforward,
associated with particle-number conservation. We thus find although quite tedious). In such a case, there are only
Z three independent invariants that we can form out of BIJ .
μnc2 1 ⃗ 2 :
E¼ d3 x ½π_ 2 þ c2s ð∇πÞ ð8Þ We find it convenient to work with
c2s 2
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi trB2 trB3
Representing
R the volume integral and time average with b≡ det B; Y≡ ; Z≡ : ð12Þ
h …i, and using the virial theorem, we have ðtrBÞ2 ðtrBÞ3
where in the last step we used the zero-temperature where w0 is a constant with the units of a mass density,
thermodynamic identities ρ þ P ¼ μn, dP ¼ ndμ. which we pulled out for convenience. It is convenient to set
The above result is fully relativistic. In the nonrelativistic w0 to be 1=c2 times the value of the relativistic enthalpy
limit, the mass carried by our wave packet is density ρ þ P on the ground state. With such a normali-
Z zation, on the background one has ∂f=∂b ¼ c2 [14], which
1 ρ dc ρ dc E we implicity use below.
M¼ 2 T 00 ≃ − m s E ¼ − m s 2 ; ð11Þ A perfect fluid can be viewed as an infinitely symmetric
c cs dP cs dρm cs
solid [4,19], whose action is invariant under volume
which is indeed Eq. (1), as obtained in Ref. [1] from the preserving diffeomorphisms acting on the ϕI fields.
point-particle effective theory. It is simple to show that the Then, the only invariant in this case is det B, and we
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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 122, 084501 (2019)
can recover the fluid EFT from the solid one by simply where the prime, subscript Y, and subscript Z denote,
setting to zero all derivatives of f with respect to Y or Z. respectively, differentiation with respect to b, Y, and Z, and
Sound waves once again correspond to the fluctu- all derivatives are evaluated on the background. Notice that,
ations of the fields about their backgrounds, with the exception of f 0 , the derivatives of f with respect to
ϕI ðxÞ ¼ b0 1=3 ½xI þ π I ðxÞ. Expanding the invariants for its arguments are of order c2L or c2T , and not of order c2 [14].
small fluctuations, one obtains the phonons’ quadratic This is what makes the T 00 below so simple in the
equations of motion nonrelativistic limit.
Let us now find the gravitational mass carried by sound
⃗ · π⃗ − c2 ð∇2 π i − ∂ i ∇
π̈ i − c2L ∂ i ∇ ⃗ · π⃗ Þ ¼ ∂ j Aij þ ∂ t Bi ;
T waves in a solid (or fluid). It is convenient to take the
ð14Þ nonrelativistic limit right away. The only Oðc2 Þ term in T 00
turns out to be
where
⃗ · π⃗ :
T 00 ≃ c2 w0 b0 ∇ ð17Þ
Aij ¼ g1 δij π⃗ _ þ g2 π_ i π_ j þ 3g3 δij ð∇
⃗ · π⃗ Þ2
2
⃗ · π⃗
þ g4 δij ð∂ k π l Þ2 þ 2g4 ∂ j π i ∇ In particular, with our parametrization of fluctuations,
quadratic and higher-order terms contribute to the energy
⃗ × π⃗ Þ2 þ 2g5 ∂ j π i ∇
þ g5 δij ð∇ ⃗ · π⃗ density of the solid, but not to its mass density. The mass of
⃗ · π⃗ þ g6 ∂ i π k ∂ j π k þ g6 ∂ k π i ∂ k π j a sound wave is therefore
− 2g5 ∂ i π j ∇ Z
þ g6 ∂ k π i ∂ j π k þ 3g7 ∂ i π k ∂ k π j ; ð15Þ M ¼ w0 b0 ⃗
∇ · π⃗ : ð18Þ
and the vector Bi is a quadratic combination of fields whose
particular form is irrelevant for what follows. (Note that we The volume integral reduces to a boundary term and, for
stopped differentiating between lower-case and upper-case large enough volumes, one might be tempted to discard it.
spatial indices, because the background configurations This is certainly allowed for a linearized solution, since we
ϕI ∝ xI break spatial and internal rotations down to can take it to be as localized as we wish. However, in
diagonal combinations, and so the equations of motion general we must be careful about nonlinear corrections.
for fluctuations will only be invariant under such combi- Splitting as before the fluctuation field into π⃗ ¼
nations.) The sound speeds and nonlinear couplings are π⃗ ð1Þ þ π⃗ ð2Þ þ …, from Eq. (14) one sees that for a localized
given by wave packet π ð1Þ , the nonlinear correction π ð2Þ can scale as
1=r2 at large distances, thus potentially giving a finite
16 f Y þ f Z contribution to Eq. (18).
c2L ¼ b0 F00 þ ; ð16aÞ
27 b0 To compute such a contribution, we first take the
divergence of Eq. (14), obtaining a wave equation directly
4 fY þ fZ for Ψ ≡ ∇ ⃗ · π⃗ ð2Þ, with π⃗ ð1Þ -dependent sources:
c2T ¼ ; ð16bÞ
9 b0
1 c2 c2 ⃗ · BÞ:
ð∂ 2t − c2L ∇2 ÞΨ ¼ ∂ i ∂ j Aij þ ∂ t ð∇ ⃗ ð19Þ
g1 ¼ − − L2 þ T2 ; ð16cÞ
2 2c c
Time-averaging this equation, we get rid of the total time
c2T
g2 ¼ 1 − ; ð16dÞ derivative terms:
c2
c2L − c2T 1 10 16 f Z 1
g3 ¼ þ b0 cL c0L − b0 cT c0T þ ; ð16eÞ ∇2 hΨi ¼ − h∂ i ∂ j Aij i; ð20Þ
3 3 9 243 b0 c2L
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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 122, 084501 (2019)
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PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 122, 084501 (2019)
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