No Arabic abstract
The second layer of $^4$He films adsorbed on a graphite substrate is an excellent experimental platform to study the interplay between superfluid and structural orders. Here, we report a rigid two-frequency torsional oscillator study on the second layer as a function of temperature and $^4$He atomic density. We find that the superfluid density is independent of frequency, which can be interpreted as unequivocal evidence of genuine superfluidity. The phase diagram established in this work reveals that a superfluid phase coexists with hexatic density-wave correlation and a registered solid phase. This suggests the second layer as a candidate for hosting two exotic quantum ground states: the spatially modulated superfluid and supersolid phases, resulting from the interplay between superfluid and structural orders.
We investigate the thermal counterflow of the superfluid $^4$He by numerically simulating three-dimensional fully coupled dynamics of the two fluids, namely quantized vortices and a normal fluid. We analyze the velocity fluctuations of the laminar normal fluid arising from the mutual friction with the quantum turbulence of the superfluid component. The streamwise fluctuations exhibit higher intensity and longer-range autocorrelation, as compared to transverse ones. The anomalous fluctuations are consistent with visualization experiments [Mastracci et al., Phys. Rev. Fluids, Vol. 4, 083305 (2019)], and our results confirm their analysis with simple models on the anisotropic fluctuations. This success validates the model of the fully coupled dynamics and paves the way for solving some outstanding problems in this two-fluid system.
The coupled dynamics of quantum turbulence (QT) and normal-fluid turbulence (NFT) have been a central challenge in quantum hydrodynamics, since it is expected to cause the unsolved T2 state of QT. We numerically studied the coupled dynamics of the two turbulences in thermal counterflow. NFT is driven by external forces to control its turbulent intensity, and the fast multipole method accelerates the calculation of QT. We show that NFT enhances QT via mutual friction. The vortex line density $L$ of the QT satisfies the statistical law $L^{1/2} approx gamma V_{ns}$ with the counterflow velocity $V_{ns}$. The obtained $gamma$ agrees with the experiment of T2 state, validating the idea that the T2 state is caused by NFT. We propose a theoretical insight into the relation between the two turbulences.
We consider fermionic states bound on domain walls in a Weyl superfluid $^3$He-A and on interfaces between $^3$He-A and a fully gapped topological superfluid $^3$He-B. We demonstrate that in both cases fermionic spectrum contains Fermi arcs which are continuous nodal lines of energy spectrum terminating at the projections of two Weyl points to the plane of surface states in momentum space. The number of Fermi arcs is determined by the index theorem which relates bulk values of topological invariant to the number of zero energy surface states. The index theorem is consistent with an exact spectrum of Bogolubov- de Gennes equation obtained numerically meanwhile the quasiclassical approximation fails to reproduce the correct number of zero modes. Thus we demonstrate that topology describes the properties of exact spectrum beyond quasiclassical approximation.
We have derived the adsorption potential of $^4$He atoms on fluorographene (GF), on graphane and on hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) by a recently developed ab initio method that incorporates the van der Waals interaction. The $^4$He monolayer on GF and on hBN is studied by state-of-the-art quantum simulations at T=0 K. With our adsorption potentials we find that in both cases the ground state of $^4$He monolayer is a fluid and not an ordered state with localized atoms as on graphite and on graphene. In the case of GF the present result is in qualitative agreement with the superfluid phase that was obtained using an empirical adsorption potential [M. Nava et al., Phys. Rev. B 86, 174509 (2012)]. This fluid state of $^4$He on GF and on hBN is characterized by a very large density modulation and at the equilibrium density the ratio $Gamma$ between the largest and the smallest local density along the direction of two neighboring adsorption sites and averaged over the perpendicular direction is $Gamma$ = 1.91 for GF and $Gamma$ = 1.65 for hBN. Recent experiments [J. Nyeki et al., Nature Physics 13, 455 (2017)] have discovered a superfluid phase in the second layer $^4$He. This is a spatially modulated superfluid that turns out to have anomalous thermal properties. This gives a strong motivation for an experimental study of monolayer $^4$He on GF and on hBN that we predict to be a superfluid with a much stronger spatial modulation.
In superfluid $^3$He-B confined in a slab geometry, domain walls between regions of different order parameter orientation are predicted to be energetically stable. Formation of the spatially-modulated superfluid stripe phase has been proposed. We confined $^3$He in a 1.1 $mu$m high microfluidic cavity and cooled it into the B phase at low pressure, where the stripe phase is predicted. We measured the surface-induced order parameter distortion with NMR, sensitive to the formation of domains. The results rule out the stripe phase, but are consistent with 2D modulated superfluid order.