Cook Caleb Q, Lucas Andrew
Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2021 Oct 22;127(17):176603. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.127.176603.
When electrons flow as a viscous fluid in anisotropic metals, the reduced symmetry can lead to exotic viscosity tensors with many additional, nonstandard components. We present a viscometry technique that can, in principle, measure the multiple dissipative viscosities allowed in isotropic and anisotropic fluids alike. By applying representation theory to exploit the intrinsic symmetry of the fluid, our viscometry is also exceptionally robust to both boundary complications and ballistic effects. We present the technique via the illustrative example of dihedral symmetry, relevant in this context as the point symmetry of 2D crystals. Finally, we propose a present-day realizable experiment for detecting, in a metal, a novel hydrodynamic phenomenon: the presence of rotational dissipation in an otherwise isotropic fluid.
