ABSTRACT
The ground state of a fermionic condensate is well protected against perturbations in the presence of an isotropic gap. Regions of gap suppression, surfaces and vortex cores which host Andreev-bound states, seemingly lift that strict protection. Here we show that in superfluid 3He the role of bound states is more subtle: when a macroscopic object moves in the superfluid at velocities exceeding the Landau critical velocity, little to no bulk pair breaking takes place, while the damping observed originates from the bound states covering the moving object. We identify two separate timescales that govern the bound state dynamics, one of them much longer than theoretically anticipated, and show that the bound states do not interact with bulk excitations.
ABSTRACT
Microelectromechanical (MEMS) and nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) are ideal candidates for exploring quantum fluids, since they can be manufactured reproducibly, cover the frequency range from hundreds of kilohertz up to gigahertz and usually have very low power dissipation. Their small size offers the possibility of probing the superfluid on scales comparable to, and below, the coherence length. That said, there have been hitherto no successful measurements of NEMS resonators in the liquid phases of helium. Here we report the operation of doubly-clamped aluminium nanobeams in superfluid 4He at temperatures spanning the superfluid transition. The devices are shown to be very sensitive detectors of the superfluid density and the normal fluid damping. However, a further and very important outcome of this work is the knowledge that now we have demonstrated that these devices can be successfully operated in superfluid 4He, it is straightforward to apply them in superfluid 3He which can be routinely cooled to below 100 µK. This brings us into the regime where nanomechanical devices operating at a few MHz frequencies may enter their mechanical quantum ground state.
ABSTRACT
A high precision torsional oscillator has been used to study 3He films of thickness from 100 to 350 nm, in the temperature range 5
ABSTRACT
In isotropic macroscopic quantum systems vortex lines can be formed while in anisotropic systems also vortex sheets are possible. Based on measurements of superfluid 3He-A, we present the principles which select between these two competing forms of quantized vorticity: sheets displace lines if the frequency of the external drive exceeds a critical limit. The resulting topologically stable state consists of multiple vortex sheets and has much faster dynamics than the state with vortex lines.
ABSTRACT
Linear defects are generic in continuous media. In quantum systems they appear as topological line defects which are associated with a circulating persistent current. In relativistic quantum field theories they are known as cosmic strings, in superconductors as quantized flux lines, and in superfluids and low-density Bose-Einstein condensates as quantized vortex lines. A conventional quantized vortex line consists of a central core around which the phase of the order parameter winds by 27(pi)n, while within the core the order parameter vanishes or is depleted from the bulk value. Usually vortices are singly quantized (that is, have n = 1). But it has been theoretically predicted that, in superfluid 3He-A, vortex lines are possible that have n = 2 and continuous structure, so that the orientation of the multicomponent order parameter changes smoothly throughout the vortex while the amplitude remains constant. Here we report direct proof, based on high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance measurements, that the most common vortex line in 3He-A has n = 2. One vortex line after another is observed to form in a regular periodic process, similar to a phase-slip in the Josephson effect.
