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Register a new userSuperfluid 3He in Aerogel
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Authors
W. P. Halperin
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Superfluid 3He is an unconventional neutral superfluid in a p-wave state with three different superfluid phases each identified by a unique set of characteristic broken symmetries and non- trivial topology. Despite natural immunity of 3He from defects and impurity of any kind, it has been found that they can be artificially introduced with high porosity silica aerogel. Furthermore, it has been shown that this modified quantum liquid becomes a superfluid with remarkably sharp thermodynamic transitions from the normal state and between its various phases. They include new superfluid phases that are stabilized by anisotropy from uniform strain imposed on the silica aerogel framework and they include new phenomena in a new class of anisotropic aerogels consisting of nematically ordered alumina strands. The study of superfluid 3He in the presence of correlated, quenched disorder from aerogel, serves as a model for understanding the effect of impurities on the symmetry and topology of unconventional superconductors.
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In recent work it was shown that new anisotropic p-wave states of superfluid 3He can be stabilized within high porosity silica aerogel under uniform positive strain [1]. In contrast, the equilibrium phase in an unstrained aerogel, is the isotropic superfluid B-phase [2]. Here we report that this phase stability depends on the sign of the strain. For negative strain of ~20% achieved by compression, the B-phase can be made more stable than the anisotropic A-phase resulting in a tricritical point for A, B, and normal phases with a critical field of ~100 mT. From pulsed NMR measurements we identify these phases and the orientation of the angular momentum.
It has been shown that the relative stabilities of various superfluid states of 3He can be influenced by anisotropy in a silica aerogel framework. We prepared a suite of aerogel samples compressed up to 30% for which we performed pulsed NMR on 3He imbibed within the aerogel. We identified A and B-phases and determined their magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams as a function of strain. From these results we infer that the B-phase is distorted by negative strain forming an anisotropic superfluid state more stable than the A-phase.
We report on orientation of the order parameter in the 3He-A and 3He-B phases caused by aerogel anisotropy. In 3He-A we have observed relatively homogeneous NMR line with an anomalously large negative frequency shift. We can attribute this effect to an orientation of orbital momentum along the axis of density anisotropy. The similar orientation effect we have seen in 3He-B. We can measure the A-phase Leggett frequency, which shows the same energy gap suppression as in the B-phase. We observe a correlation of A - B transition temperature and NMR frequency shift.
We present data for energy dissipation factor (Q^{-1}) over a broad temperature range at various pressures of a torsion pendulum setup used to study 3He confined in a 98% open silica aerogel. Values for Q^{-1} above T_c are temperature independent and have a weak pressure dependence. Below T_c, a deliberate axial compression of the aerogel by 10% widens the range of metastability for a superfluid Equal Spin Pairing (ESP) state; we observe this ESP phase on cooling and the B phase on warming over an extended temperature region. While the dissipation for the B phase tends to zero as T goes to 0, Q^{-1} exhibits a peak value greater than that at T_c at intermediate temperatures. Values for Q^{-1} in the ESP phase are consistently higher than in the B phase and are proportional to rho_s/rho until the ESP to B phase transition is attained. We apply a viscoelastic collision-drag model, which couples the motion of the helium and the aerogel through a frictional relaxation time tau_f. Our dissipation data is not sensitive to the damping due to the presumed small but non-zero value of tau_f. The result is that an additional mechanism to dissipate energy not captured in the collision-drag model and related to the emergence of the superfluid order must exist. The extra dissipation below T_c is possibly associated with mutual friction between the superfluid phases and the clamped normal fluid. The pressure dependence of the measured dissipation in both superfluid phases is likely related to the pressure dependence of the gap structure of the dirty superfluid. The large dissipation in the ESP state is consistent with the phase being the A or the Polar with the order parameter nodes oriented in the plane of the cell and perpendicular to the aerogel anisotropy axis.
It was found that NMR properties of both superfluid phases of $^3$He in anisotropic aerogel can be described in terms of the bulk superfluid order parameters with the orbital order parameter vector fixed by anisotropy of the aerogel sample. It was also shown that by a proper squeezing it is possible to get the aerogel sample with isotropic NMR properties.
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