Zero sound in a mixture of a single-component fermion gas and a Bose-Einstein condensate.

The resonant dynamics of mediated interactions supports zero sound in a cold atom degenerate mixture of a single-component fermion gas and a Bose-Einstein condensate. We characterize the onset of instability in the phase separation of an unstable mixture and we find a rich collective mode structure for stable mixtures with one undamped mode that exhibits an avoided crossing and a Landau-damped mode that terminates.

Effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the universal thermal conductance.

The effect of phonon scattering by surface roughness on the thermal conductance in mesoscopic systems at low temperatures is calculated using full elasticity theory. The low frequency behavior of the scattering shows novel power law dependences arising from the unusual properties of the elastic modes. This leads to new predictions for the low temperature depression of the thermal conductance below the ideal universal value. Comparison with the data of Schwab et al. [Nature (London) 404, 974 (2000)] suggests that surface roughness on a scale of the width of the thermal pathway is important in the experiment.