Comment on 'Nucleation of 3He-B from the A Phase: A Cosmic-Ray Effect?'

A comment to the article by Leggett, A. J.Peer reviewe

Quasiparticle scattering measurements of laminar and turbulent vortex flow in the spin-down of superfluid 3He-B

The dynamics of quantized vortices is studied in superfluid 3He-B after a rapid stop of rotation. We use Andreev reflection of thermal excitations to monitor vortex motion with quartz tuning fork oscillators in two different experimental setups at temperatures below 0.2Tc. Deviations from ideal cylindrical symmetry in the flow environment cause the early decay to become turbulent. This is identified from a rapid initial overshoot in the vortex density above the value before the spin-down and its subsequent decay with a t^(-3/2) time dependence. The high polarization of the vortices along the rotation axis significantly suppresses the effective turbulent kinematic viscosity below the values reported for more homogeneous turbulence and leads to a laminar late-time response. The vortex dissipation down to T < 0.15Tc is determined from the precession frequency of the polarized vortex configuration. In the limit of vanishing normal component density, the laminar dissipation is found to approach a temperature-independent value, whose origin is currently under discussion.Comment: 8 pages, 5 figure

Continuous Vortices with Broken Symmetry in Rotating Superfluid 3He-A

New NMR measurements are reported on continuous 3He-A vortices in tilted magnetic fields. We introduce a symmetry classification of the continuous vortices with broken axial symmetry. It is found that the discrete internal symmetry may in addition be broken in two inequivalent ways, producing two different continuous vortices. Although NMR may not distinguish between these two vortices, the observed vortex satellite peak is well accounted for by spin waves localized in the soft core of such vortices.Peer reviewe

Vortex core transitions in superfluid 3He in globally anisotropic aerogels

Core structures of a single vortex in A-like and B-like phases of superfluid 3He in uniaxially compressed and stretched aerogels are studied by numerically solving Ginzburg-Landau equations derived microscopically. It is found that, although any uniaxial deformation leads to a wider A-like phase with the axial pairing in the pressure-temperature phase diagram, the vortex core states in the two phases in aerogel depend highly on the type of deformation. In a compressed aerogel, the first-order vortex core transition (VCT) previously seen in the bulk B phase appears at any pressure in the B-like phase while no strange vortex core is expected in the corresponding A-like phase. By contrast, in a stretched aerogel, the VCT in the B-like phase is lost while another VCT is expected to occur between a nonunitary core and a polar one in the A-like phase. Experimental search for these results is hoped to understand correlation between superfluid 3He and aerogel structure.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures Text was changed. Resubmitted versio

Structure of surface vortex sheet between two rotating 3He superfluids

We study a two-phase sample of superfluid 3He where vorticity exists in one phase (3He-A) but cannot penetrate across the interfacial boundary to a second coherent phase (3He-B). We calculate the bending of the vorticity into a surface vortex sheet on the interface and solve the internal structure of this new type of vortex sheet. The compression of the vorticity from three to two dimensions enforces a structure which is made up of half-quantum units, independently of the structure of the source vorticity in the bulk. These results are consistent with our NMR measurements.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Defect Formation in Quench-Cooled Superfluid Phase Transition

We use neutron absorption in rotating 3He-B to heat locally a 10 micrometer-size volume into normal phase. When the heated region cools back in microseconds, vortex lines are formed. We record with NMR the number of lines as a function of superflow velocity and compare to the Kibble-Zurek theory of vortex-loop freeze-out from a random network of defects. The measurements confirm the calculated loop-size distribution and show that also the superfluid state itself forms as a patchwork of competing A and B phase blobs. This explains the A to B transition in supercooled neutron-irradiated 3He-A.Comment: RevTex file, 4 pages, 3 figures, resubmitted to Phys. Rev. Let

Unconventional Vortices and Phase Transitions in Rapidly Rotating Superfluid ^{3}He

This paper studies vortex-lattice phases of rapidly rotating superfluid ^3He based on the Ginzburg-Landau free-energy functional. To identify stable phases in the p-Omega plane (p: pressure; Omega: angular velocity), the functional is minimized with the Landau-level expansion method using up to 3000 Landau levels. This system can sustain various exotic vortices by either (i) shifting vortex cores among different components or (ii) filling in cores with components not used in the bulk. In addition, the phase near the upper critical angular velocity Omega_{c2} is neither the A nor B phases, but the polar state with the smallest superfluid density as already shown by Schopohl. Thus, multiple phases are anticipated to exist in the p-Omega plane. Six different phases are found in the present calculation performed over 0.0001 Omega_{c2} <= Omega <= Omega_{c2}, where Omega_{c2} is of order (1- T/T_c) times 10^{7} rad/s. It is shown that the double-core vortex experimentally found in the B phase originates from the conventional hexagonal lattice of the polar state near Omega_{c2} via (i) a phase composed of interpenetrating polar and Scharnberg-Klemm sublattices; (ii) the A-phase mixed-twist lattice with polar cores; (iii) the normal-core lattice found in the isolated-vortex calculation by Ohmi, Tsuneto, and Fujita; and (iv) the A-phase-core vortex discovered in another isolated-vortex calculation by Salomaa and Volovik. It is predicted that the double-core vortex will disappear completely in the experimental p-T phase diagram to be replaced by the A-phase-core vortex for Omega >~ 10^{3} ~ 10^{4} rad/s. C programs to minimize a single-component Ginzburg-Landau functional are available at {http://phys.sci.hokudai.ac.jp/~kita/index-e.html}.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure