Flow and Supersolidity in Helium

Recent torsional oscillator measurements showed evidence of non-classical rotational inertia in solid helium at temperatures below 200 mK and generated a great deal of interest in a possible supersolid state. The nature and properties of such a state are still unclear, although experiments involving ³He impurities and crystal annealing may provide clues. It would be very interesting to know whether supersolids share any of the other unusual properties of superfluids: superleaks, persistent currents, second sound and quantized vortices. We have studied the response of solid helium to pressure differences, in order to look for unusual flow properties that might be associated with supersolidity. Our measurements involved both helium confined in the nanometer pores of Vycor glass and bulk solid helium, at temperatures as low as 30 mK. Near melting, solid helium flows very easily but we did not see any evidence of superflow at low temperatures. If helium does become a supersolid at low temperatures, then its response to pressure gradients must be very different from that of liquid helium. We describe these and other experiments and discuss the role that defects may play in the low temperature behavior of solid helium.