Physical mechanisms for effective mass enhancement in ³He

We use structural information from simulations and from variational ground state calculations for calculating the effective mass of ³He at zero temperature. It is found that the relatively large effective mass is due to a combination of several physical effects: Density fluctuations cause an effective mass enhancement due to predominantly hydrodynamic backflow. This effect is, around the Fermi momentum, a smooth function of the single particle wave number; its magnitude is consistent with the effective mass of ⁴He impurities in ³He. Spin-fluctuations, on the other hand, cause a pronounced peak of the effective mass around the Fermi wave number. We also find, consistent with earlier work, an instability of the single particle spectrum at about 2.5 k_F, this is due to the coupling to density fluctuations in the maxon region.