Dry demagnetization cryostat for sub-millikelvin helium experiments: Refrigeration and thermometry

We demonstrate successful “dry” refrigeration of quantum fluids down to T = 0.16 mK by using copper nuclear demagnetization stage that is pre-cooled by a pulse-tube-based dilution refrigerator. This type of refrigeration delivers a flexible and simple sub-mK solution to a variety of needs including experiments with superfluid 3He. Our central design principle was to eliminate relative vibrations between the high-field magnet and the nuclear refrigeration stage, which resulted in the minimum heat leak of Q = 4.4 nW obtained in field of 35 mT. For thermometry, we employed a quartz tuning fork immersed into liquid 3He. We show that the fork oscillator can be considered as self-calibrating in superfluid 3He at the crossover point from hydrodynamic into ballistic quasiparticle regime.Peer reviewe

Melting curve of 4^4He: no sign of the supersolid transition down to 10 mK

We have measured the melting curve of $^4$He in the temperature range from 10 to 400 mK with the accuracy of about 0.5 $\mu$bar. Crystals of different quality show the expected $T^4$-dependence in the range from 80 to 400 mK without any sign of the supersolid transition, and the coefficient is in excellent agreement with available data on the sound velocity in liquid $^4$He and on the Debye temperature of solid $^4$He. Below 80 mK we have observed a small deviation from $T^4$-dependence which however cannot be attributed to the supersolid transition because instead of decrease the entropy of the solid rather remains constant, about $2.5\times10^{-6}$ $R$Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, published in Physical Review Letter

Solid 4He and the Supersolid Phase: from Theoretical Speculation to the Discovery of a New State of Matter? A Review of the Past and Present Status of Research

The possibility of a supersolid state of matter, i.e., a crystalline solid exhibiting superfluid properties, first appeared in theoretical studies about forty years ago. After a long period of little interest due to the lack of experimental evidence, it has attracted strong experimental and theoretical attention in the last few years since Kim and Chan (Penn State, USA) reported evidence for nonclassical rotational inertia effects, a typical signature of superfluidity, in samples of solid 4He. Since this "first observation", other experimental groups have observed such effects in the response to the rotation of samples of crystalline helium, and it has become clear that the response of the solid is extremely sensitive to growth conditions, annealing processes, and 3He impurities. A peak in the specific heat in the same range of temperatures has been reported as well as anomalies in the elastic behaviour of solid 4He with a strong resemblance to the phenomena revealed by torsional oscillator experiments. Very recently, the observation of unusual mass transport in hcp solid 4He has also been reported, suggesting superflow. From the theoretical point of view, powerful simulation methods have been used to study solid 4He, but the interpretation of the data is still rather difficult; dealing with the question of supersolidity means that one has to face not only the problem of the coexistence of quantum coherence phenomena and crystalline order, exploring the realm of spontaneous symmetry breaking and quantum field theory, but also the problem of the role of disorder, i.e., how defects, such as vacancies, impurities, dislocations, and grain boundaries, participate in the phase transition mechanism.Comment: Published on J. Phys. Soc. Jpn., Vol.77, No.11, p.11101

Defects and glassy dynamics in solid He-4: Perspectives and current status

We review the anomalous behavior of solid He-4 at low temperatures with particular attention to the role of structural defects present in solid. The discussion centers around the possible role of two level systems and structural glassy components for inducing the observed anomalies. We propose that the origin of glassy behavior is due to the dynamics of defects like dislocations formed in He-4. Within the developed framework of glassy components in a solid, we give a summary of the results and predictions for the effects that cover the mechanical, thermodynamic, viscoelastic, and electro-elastic contributions of the glassy response of solid He-4. Our proposed glass model for solid He-4 has several implications: (1) The anomalous properties of He-4 can be accounted for by allowing defects to freeze out at lowest temperatures. The dynamics of solid He-4 is governed by glasslike (glassy) relaxation processes and the distribution of relaxation times varies significantly between different torsional oscillator, shear modulus, and dielectric function experiments. (2) Any defect freeze-out will be accompanied by thermodynamic signatures consistent with entropy contributions from defects. It follows that such entropy contribution is much smaller than the required superfluid fraction, yet it is sufficient to account for excess entropy at lowest temperatures. (3) We predict a Cole-Cole type relation between the real and imaginary part of the response functions for rotational and planar shear that is occurring due to the dynamics of defects. Similar results apply for other response functions. (4) Using the framework of glassy dynamics, we predict low-frequency yet to be measured electro-elastic features in defect rich He-4 crystals. These predictions allow one to directly test the ideas and very presence of glassy contributions in He-4.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figure

Quartz tuning fork as a probe of surface oscillations

Quartz tuning forks are high-quality mechanical oscillators widely used in low temperature physics as viscometers, thermometers, and pressure sensors. We demonstrate that a fork placed in liquid helium near the surface of solid helium is very sensitive to the oscillations of the solid-liquid interface. We developed a double-resonance read-out technique, which allowed us to detect oscillations of the surface with an accuracy of 1 Å in 10 s. Using this technique, we have investigated crystallization waves in 4He down to 10 mK. In contrast to previous studies of crystallization waves, our measurement scheme has very low dissipation, on the order of 20 pW, which allows us to carry out experiments even at sub-mK temperatures. We propose to use this scheme in the search for crystallization waves in 3He, which exist only at temperatures well below 0.5 mK. The suggested technique can also be used for accurate displacement detection in a large variety of systems.Peer reviewe

Topologically-imposed vacancies and mobile solid 3He on carbon nanotube

Funding Information: We are grateful to Henri Godfrin, Ari Harju, Ville Havu, Andreas Huettel, Martti Puska, and Erkki Thuneberg for discussions, and Petri Tonteri from Densiq Ltd. (90620 Oulu, Finland) for providing us with the ultra-pure grafoil. We thank Miika Haataja for measuring the surface area of the grafoil sample and Qiang Zhang for participation in the optimization of the CNT process. Funding: This work was supported by Academy of Finland projects No. 314448 (BOLOSE), No. 312295 (CoE, Quantum Technology Finland), and No. 316572 (CNTstress). The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, under Grant Agreement No 824109 (EMP), under ERC Grant No. 670743 (QuDeT), and in part by Marie-Curie training network project (OMT, No. 722923). J.-P.K. is grateful for the financial support from Vilho, Yrjö and Kalle Väisälä Foundation of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters. This research project utilized the Aalto University OtaNano/LTL infrastructure. | openaire: EC/H2020/670743/EU//QuDeT | openaire: EC/H2020/824109/EU//EMP | openaire: EC/H2020/722923/EU//OMTLow dimensional fermionic quantum systems are exceptionally interesting because they reveal distinctive physical phenomena, including among others, topologically protected excitations, edge states, frustration, and fractionalization. Our aim was to confine 3He on a suspended carbon nanotube to form 2-dimensional Fermi-system. Here we report our measurements of the mechanical resonance of the nanotube with adsorbed sub-monolayer down to 10 mK. At intermediate coverages we have observed the famous 1/3 commensurate solid. However, at larger monolayer densities we have observed a quantum phase transition from 1/3 solid to an unknown, soft, and mobile solid phase. We interpret this mobile solid phase as a bosonic commensurate crystal consisting of helium dimers with topologically-induced zero-point vacancies which are delocalized at low temperatures. We thus demonstrate that 3He on a nanotube merges both fermionic and bosonic phenomena, with a quantum phase transition between fermionic solid 1/3 phase and the observed bosonic dimer solid.Peer reviewe