How Infrared Singularities Affect Nambu–Goldstone Bosons at Finite Temperatures

Abstract

Ordered phases realized through broken continuous symmetries embrace long-range order-parameter fluctuations as manifest in the power-law decays of both the transverse and longitudinal correlations, which are similar to those at the second-order transition point. We calculate the transverse one-loop correction to the dispersion relation of nonrelativistic Nambu-Goldstone (NG) bosons at finite temperatures, assuming that they have well-defined dispersion relations with some integer exponents. It is found that the transverse correlations make the lifetime of the NG bosons vanish right on the assumed dispersion curve below three dimensions at finite temperatures. Combined with the vanishing of the longitudinal "mass", the result indicates that the correlations generally bring both an intrinsic lifetime to the excitations and a qualitative change in the dispersion relation at long wavelengths below three dimensions at finite temperatures, unless it is protected by some conservation law. A more detailed calculation performed specifically on a single-component Bose-Einstein condensate reveals that the gapless Bogoliubov mode predicted by the perturbative treatment is modified substantially after incorporating the correlations to have (i) an intrinsic lifetime and (ii) a peak shift at long wavelengths from the linear dispersion relation. Thus, the NG bosons may be fluctuating intrinsically into and out of the ordered "vacuum" to maintain the order temporally.