1.
Phys Rev Lett
; 113(8): 085301, 2014 Aug 22.
Article
in English
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-25192103
ABSTRACT
High resolution measurements reveal that condensation isotherms of (4)He in high porosity silica aerogel become discontinuous below a critical temperature. We show that this behavior does not correspond to an equilibrium phase transition modified by the disorder induced by the aerogel structure, but to the disorder-driven critical point predicted for the athermal out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the random-field Ising model. Our results evidence the key role of nonequilibrium effects in the phase transitions of disordered systems.