AT TEMPERATURES so low that the de Broglie wavelength corresponding to the thermal motion of the atoms in a liquid becomes comparable with the distances between the atoms, the macroscopic properties of the liquid are determined by quantum effects. The theory of such quantum liquids is of considerable fundamental interest, although there exist in Nature only two such that are literally liquids, the liquid isotopes of helium He 3 and He 4 at temperatures ~, 1-2K. All other substances solidify well before quantum effects become important in them. In this connection, it may be recalled that according to classical mechanics all bodies should be solid at absolute zero (see Part 1, section 64). Helium, however, because of the peculiarly weak interaction between its atoms, remains liquid down to temperatures where quantum phenomena come into effect, whereupon it need not solidify.

The calculation of the thermodynamic quantities for a macroscopic body requires a knowledge of its energy level spectrum. In a system of strongly interacting particles such as a quantum liquid, we can refer, of course, only to levels that correspond to quantum-mechanical stationary states of the whole liquid, not to states of the individual atoms. In calculating the partition function at sufficiently low temperatures, we are to take account only of the weakly excited energy levels of the liquid, lying fairly close to the ground state. The following point is of fundamental importance for the whole theory. Any weakly excited state of a macroscopic body may be regarded, in quantum mechanics, as an assembly of separate elementary excitations. These behave like quasi-particles moving in the volume occupied by the body and possessing definite energies e and momenta p. The form of the function e(p), the dispersion relation for the elementary excitations, is an important characteristic of the energy spectrum of the body. It must again be emphasized that the concept of elementary excitations arises as a means of quantum-mechanical description of the collective motion of the atoms in a body, and the quasi- particles cannot be identified with the individual atoms or molecules. There are various types of energy spectrum that can in principle occur in quantum liquids. There will be completely different macroscopic properties also, depending on the type of spectrum. We shall begin by considering a liquid with what may be called a Fermi spectrum. The theory of such a Fermi liquid is due to L. D. Landau (1956-1958); he derived the results given in sections1-4.