Torsional Oscillator Study of Thin Helium Films on Hydrogen Substrates

We have made torsional oscillator measurements of thin helium films on a Mylar surface preplated with 2 and 5 layers of H ₂ . The minimum ⁴ He coverage needed for superfluidity, or inert layer, n _o on both surfaces is found to be 6 mole/m ² . This is equivalent to 1/2 of a monolayer at bulk liquid density. The superfluid transition in coverages above n _o is similar to that found on bare Mylar, exhibiting the standard Kosterlitz-Thouless characteristics. We find no anomaly in _s or the dissipation in the film that can be identified with a second transition reported in recent third sound experiments.     

Torsional Oscillator Experiments under DC Rotation with Reduced Vibration

We describe a highly stable, rotating cryostat designed for torsional oscillator experiments under DC rotation, where vortex lines penetration has been studied for 3D superfluids made of monolayer He films as well as for the supersolid state in hcp solid ⁴He. Especially, torsional oscillator experiments on hcp solid ⁴He are known to be quite sensitive to small vibrations or linear velocities on the order of 10 ??m/s or less. Thus, vibrations of the apparatus may destroy the measurements if they are not smaller than or equal to those of the building or the ground itself. The torsional oscillator performance described here often gives better data under steady rotation at moderate speeds than under stationary conditions. The article describes briefly a design idea shared by the two rotating cryostats at ISSP, the University of Tokyo, and discusses the torsional oscillator (TO) experiments under DC rotation. This is truly a high speed rotating cryostat with maximum rotational speed of at least 6 revolutions per second for TO experiments. It gives also much higher stability at reasonably low rotational speed because of the well-planned structure of the double frame construction with a lot of mass for the upper drive frame for rotation and the almost mechanically isolated, except for the drive mode motion, rotating cryostat with much higher stability of the inner frame for the cryostat mount. Phenomena of quantized vortex lines penetration through a macroscopic superfluid give unique information about the superfluidity itself. A method for detection of vortex lines penetration events using TO technology is also briefly reviewed.     

Torsion Pendulum for the Study of Thin 3He Films

We report on the design of a torsion pendulum that can resolve the mass loading from 5×10 ^{17 3} He atoms (equivalent to a 1000Å film) with a 0.1% resolution. The oscillator is fabricated from coin silver alloy, and the working surfaces are two highly polished coin silver discs, each with well-characterized surface roughness, that are diffusion welded together using a copper gasket. We report on the cell's temperature dependent background. The cell will be used to examine the evolution of the superfluid density and transition temperature as a function of film thickness as well as the normal fluid behavior.     

Torsional Oscillator Experiments with High Stability and Reproducibility

We report experiments of the torsional oscillator to observe the superfluid transition in ⁴ He films in porous glass (the pore diameter is 1m). Stability and reproducibility of the oscillator, which quite often is problematic in previous experiments, is essential for a quantitative analysis of observations in different conditions. It follows that the friction of the superfluid films and the energy dissipation of the solid films are derived from comparisons of measurements for different film thickness.     

Frictional Effects in Thin 3He Films

The recent high-precision torsional oscillator experiments of Casey et al. involving thin films of normal liquid ³He showed that the film decouples from the substrate with a time constant which is proportional to T ⁻¹ where T is the absolute temperature. We interpret this experiment by adapting a theory due to Meyerovich which was developed for dilute ³He-⁴He mixtures flowing between two relatively smooth plates. The analysis of the experiment confirms the central idea that varies as T ⁻¹. The variation of with film thickness, d, is affected by the change in the shape of the free surface of the film, due to van der Waals forces, as the film becomes thinner.     

Quartz Oscillator Study of Monolayer 4He and 3He - 4He Mixture Films Adsorbed on Solid H2

The superfluid transition in submonolayer and monolayer ⁴ He films and ³ He - ⁴ He mixture films on solid H ₂ has been studied using a quartz crystal microbalance technique. Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) transitions were observed in submonolayer ⁴ He films with density greater than 0.062 ± 0.002 Å ^–2 . We determine a binding energy of ⁴ He to 0.241 Å ^–2 H ₂ of –15.7 K in the. presence of 1 monolayer of ⁴ He. At several ⁴ He coverages, a range of submonolayer ³ He coverages was studied (n ₃ 0.0567 Å ^–2 ). With each increase in the ³ He coverage, the KT transition temperature decreased. For the higher coverage mixture films studied (n ₄ 0.0726 Å ^–2 ) we observed an apparent second decoupling of the film from the quartz oscillator frequency in addition to the KT transition. We have studied the. coverage dependence of this new feature.     

The Superfluid Transition and Vortex Dynamics in Submonolayer Superfluid 4He Films in Porous Glass Under Rotation

A combination of a rotating dilution refrigerator and high-Q torsional oscillator technique has been used to study dynamics of vortices in thin ⁴ He films adsorbed on the porous glass (d=1m pore size). Under rotation an additional dissipation peak with the amplitude proportional to the angular velocity is seen at the middle of the superfluid transition, on the low temperature side of the stationary peak which is present even at =0. We attribute this peak to the 3D Type vortices created in multiply connected ⁴ He film by the rotation. Peak shape of the rotation-induced dissipation could be interpreted as a freezing of the 3D vortices well below T _c     

Torsional Oscillator Measurements of Liquid 4He Confined in 2.2-nm Channels of FSM

We have performed torsional oscillator measurements for liquid ⁴He confined in 2.2-nm channels of FSM up to 2.45 MPa. At 0.1 MPa, the resonant frequency increases with decreasing temperature. It shows a small bend at about 0.9 K, and then keeps increasing down to the lowest temperature, 0.16 K. The magnitude of the frequency increase below 0.9 K is suppressed with increasing pressure, while the temperature of the bend shows almost no pressure dependence.      

Comparison between Torsional Oscillator and Ultrasonic Measurements of 4He Confined in Nano-Porous Media

We have performed torsional oscillator and ultrasonic measurements for ⁴He confined in 2D nano-porous substrate, hectorite. For ⁴He films, the resonance frequency of the torsional oscillator increases rapidly just below a superfluid transition temperature (T _C ), and then becomes constant at the lower temperature. In contrast, the sound velocity below T _C increases monotonically with decreasing temperature. For liquid ⁴He the sound velocity has a small bend at T _b of about 0.9 K. Its increase below T _b is enhanced as the pressure is increased.     

Low Temperature Heat-Capacities of Liquid 3He Thin Films

We have measured the heat capacity of ³ He thin films adsorbed on graphite at an areal density of 15.0 nm ^–2 down to as low as 100 K. The second-layer ³ He behaves as a degenerate 2D Fermi fluid in the whole temperature range we studied. We observed no anomalous behavior in the heat capacity near 3 mK in contradiction to the recent report by other workers. This indicates that possible superfluid transitions would be below 100 K. Instead, a small and temperature-independent contribution to the heat capacity was observed, which we attribute to nuclear-spin degrees of freedom in glassy solid ³ He trapped in substrate heterogeneities.     

Superfluid 3He Thin Films with Specularly Reflecting Walls

We calculate the specific heat of superfluid ³ He film thinner than the coherence length. In such a thin film, quantization on the confined direction makes eigenstates discrete, thus there appears a set of Fermi disks which are just like subband. Because of both the discreteness and ABM-like energy gap, the specific heat exhibits Schottky type character, which becomes conspicuous in special thin region.     

3He Transverse Excited State Occupation in Thin 3He-4He Films

The discovery that ³ He was occupying transverse excited states at submonolayer coverages in ³ He-⁴ He mixture films on a Nuclepore substrate, was a surprise. In this note we discuss the relationship between theory and experiment in attempting to understand the physics of this behavior. We first discuss various single-atom-limit calculations of the level spacing between the ground-state and first excited state. We then introduce a free, quasi-particle picture for analyzing experimental magnetization step data and compare those results with the single-atom-limit calculations. The experiments clearly show excited state occupation at submonolayer coverages in contradistinction with the calculations. We then briefly discuss a microscopic, semi-phenomenological theory which, in agreement with experiment, yields ³ He occupation of the first excited state at submonolayer coverages. The mechanism is a model ³ He-³ He effective interaction due to one ripplon exchange. This effective interaction is density dependent and very long ranged. It strongly modifies the small-k properties of the ³ He self-energy and, in particular, causes the ground-state to first excited state level spacing to decrease with increasing ³ He areal density.     

Effects of 3He Impurity on the Non-classical Rotational Inertia of Solid 4He Studied by Double Resonance Torsional Oscillator

We have carried out systematic measurements of the ³He-impurity effect using a compound torsional pendulum, which allows probing “non-classical rotational inertia” (NCRI) of the identical solid ⁴He sample at two different frequencies at 495 Hz and 1172 Hz. The measurements have shown significant differences in the temperature dependence of the NCRI signal as well as the energy dissipation peak positions between the two frequencies. The NCRI fraction derived from the higher frequency mode is greater than that derived from the lower frequency mode at all temperatures. The normalized NCRI fraction shows that T ₅₀ (≡temperature at which NCRI fraction decreases to 50% of the maximum) is greater in the higher frequency mode by ～9, 18, 30 and 35 mK when the nominal ³He impurity added is 0.3, 6, 12 and 25 ppm, respectively. The systematic changes in the inverse quality factor (Q ^?1) were also measured at the same ³He-impurity concentrations.     

高性能微/纳米结构不粘薄膜的研究

从疏液性的2个基本条件、粗糙度和低表面能出发,简要阐述了化学腐蚀和阳极氧化方法在金属表面构建微/纳米复合细微结构的过程,以及低表面能氟硅烷成膜工艺.并在分析和计算的基础上讨论了所制备的微/纳米结构薄膜的不粘机制,对比了使用不同方法所获得的微/纳米结构薄膜的性能和特点.     

Simultaneous Measurements of an Ultrasound and a Torsional Oscillator for 4He in a Nanoporous Glass

Previously, we carried out ultrasonic measurements for liquid ⁴He filled in a nanoporous glass (Gelsil), and observed an increase in the sound velocity due to decoupling of the superfluid component. At zero pressure, the superfluid transition temperature T _C is suppressed to 1.4 K from the bulk lambda point, 2.17 K. This behavior is the same as torsional oscillator measurements by Yamamoto et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett. 93:075302, 2004). However, the pressure dependence of T _C and the temperature dependence of the superfluid fraction are very different from the torsional oscillator measurements. In order to clarify the origin of the difference, we have developed a new technique of simultaneous measurement of an ultrasound and a torsional oscillator, and the system successfully works for a nanoporous glass. Here, we compare decoupling of the superfluid component for ⁴He films between an ultrasound and a torsional oscillator.     

Probable Observation of Quantized Vortex Lines Through Solid He Under DC Rotation

We report how one can detect quantized vortices in superfluids contained in cylindrical vessels in well-designed torsional oscillator (TO) experiments under DC rotation. We show the case of an artificial 3D superfluid (Fukuda et al. in Phys. Rev. B 71:212502, 2005) which is made of Kosterlits-Thouless 2D He film condensed on a porous glass substrate with a 3D connected surface of well-controlled pore size. We understand the TO experimental results with an extra energy dissipation peak under DC rotation by considering the circular quantized superflow around each of the vortex lines and interaction with thermally excited 2D vortices as discussed in Fukuda et al. (Phys. Rev. B 71:212502, 2005) and in Nemirovskii and Sonin (Phys. Rev. B 76: 224507, 2007). We discuss here the case of hcp solid ⁴He (see for ex. Balibar and Caupin in J. Phys., Condens. Matter 20:173201-1-19, 2008) and show the evidence of observation of the vortex lines penetration below a supersolid transition temperature (Kubota et al. in J. Low Temp. Phys. 158:572, 2010), T _c , where macroscopic phase coherence is realized. It is found at exactly the same temperature T _c , below which the hysteresis occurrs (Shimizu et ail. in arXiv:0903.1326, 2009). For hcp solid ⁴He we have reported the vortex fluid (VF) state onset temperature (Penzev et al. in Phys. Rev. Lett. 101:065301, 2008) T _o =??500 mK, by detailed drive velocity, V _ac dependence study using TO technique. The TO response of the hcp ⁴He is characterized by the energy dissipation peaked at T _p near 100 mK similar to the behavior in a KT transition. The real supersolid (SS) state occurs at T _c below T _p and much lower than T _o . Our observation of the evidence of vortex lines penetration just below T _c together with the VF state properties gives support for the idea that hcp ⁴He shares some features with the ??new type of superconductors??, where the vortex state, involving the VF as well as various vortex solid states, has been commonly discussed (Fisher et al. in Phys. Rev. B 43(1):130, 1991; Leggett in Quantum Liquids, Oxford University Press, London, 2006).     

Models for Third Sound in Thin 3He-4He Films

Third sound speeds in ³ He- ⁴ He thin films are sensitive to the transverse single-particle state occupied by the ³ He. The third sound speed in the low coverage region with the ³ He occupying the transverse ground-state can be understood quantitatively. The onset of occupation of the first excited transverse state is signaled by a high coverage feature in the third sound speed. Three third sound models for the high coverage region, differing in their assumptions about the spatial distribution of the excited states, are introduced. Using the experimental third sound data, these models can also be used to infer the fractional population of the ³ He in the first excited state as a function of coverage. It is found that the third sound analyses each predict a larger fractional population in the first excited state at monolayer completion than a recent analysis of magnetization step data taken on the same system.     

室温下高速沉积AZO薄膜的研究

在室温下,采用射频磁控溅射技术以较大的功率密度(7W/cm2)沉积了一系列掺铝氧化锌(AZO)透明导电薄膜,探索了溅射压强对沉积速率及薄膜性能的影响。结果表明,当工作压强为2.0Pa时,高速(67nm/min)沉积得到的薄膜的电阻率为2.63×10-3Ω.cm,可见光平均透过率为83%,并且在薄膜表面有一定的织构。     

Low Frequency Elastic Measurements on Solid ^{4}He in Vycor Using a Torsional Oscillator

Torsional oscillator (TO) experiments involving solid \(^{4}\) He confined in the nanoscale pores of Vycor glass showed anomalous frequency changes at temperatures below 200 mK. These were initially attributed to decoupling of some of the helium’s mass from the oscillator, the expected signature of a supersolid. However, these and similar anomalous effects seen with bulk \(^{4}\) He now appear to be artifacts arising from large shear modulus changes when mobile dislocations are pinned by \(^{3}\) He impurities. We have used a TO technique to directly measure the shear modulus of the solid \(^{4}\) He/Vycor system at a frequency (1.2 kHz) comparable to that used in previous TO experiments. The shear modulus increases gradually as the TO is cooled from 1 K to 20 mK. We attribute the gradual modulus change to the freezing out of thermally activated relaxation processes in the solid helium. The absence of rapid changes below 200 mK is expected since mobile dislocations could not exist in pores as small as those of Vycor. Our results support the interpretation of a recent TO experiment that showed no anomaly when elastic effects in bulk helium were eliminated by ensuring that there were no gaps around the Vycor sample.