Persistent supercurrents in a planar non-relativistic chiral fluid Original Research Article

We study the possible stationary persistent supercurrents flowing on a cylindrical sample supporting a two-dimensional charged fluid. The internal dynamics of the fluid is obtained by means of an effective theory in which the fluid self-interacts through a U(1) gauge field. We find that the presence of persistent supercurrents depends on what kind of gauge field it is. In particular the current is zero if it is a Maxwell gauge field, and it is maximal if it is a Chern-Simons gauge field. There is an intermediate behaviour in the presence of both Maxwell and Chern-Simons terms. Therefore it appears that persistent supercurrents are possible only if the fluid is chiral.