Rotons, Superfluidity, and Helium Crystals
- Laboratoire de Physique Statistique de l'Ecole Normale Superieure, associe au CNRS et aux Universites Paris 6 et 7, 24 Rue Lhomond, 75231 Paris Cedex 05 (France)
Fritz London understood that quantum mechanics could show up at the macroscopic level, and, in 1938, he proposed that superfluidity was a consequence of Bose-Einstein condensation. However, Lev Landau never believed in London's ideas; instead, he introduced quasiparticles to explain the thermodynamics of superfluid 4He and a possible mechanism for its critical velocity. One of these quasiparticles, a crucial one, was his famous ''roton'' which he considered as an elementary vortex. At the LT0 conference (Cambridge, 1946), London criticized Landau and his ''theory based on the shaky grounds of imaginary rotons''. Despite their rather strong disagreement, Landau was awarded the London prize in 1960, six years after London's death. Today, we know that London and Landau had both found part of the truth: BEC takes place in 4He, and rotons exist.In my early experiments on quantum evaporation, I found direct evidence for the existence of rotons and for evaporation processes in which they play the role of photons in the photoelectric effect. But rotons are now considered as particular phonons which are nearly soft, due to some local order in superfluid 4He. Later we studied helium crystals which are model systems for the general study of crystal surfaces, but also exceptional systems with unique quantum properties. In our recent studies of nucleation, rotons show their importance again: by using acoustic techniques, we have extended the study of liquid 4He up to very high pressures where the liquid state is metastable, and we wish to demonstrate that the vanishing of the roton gap may destroy superfluidity and trigger an instability towards the crystalline state.
- OSTI ID:
- 20877552
- Journal Information:
- AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 850, Issue 1; Conference: LT24: 24. international conference on low temperature physics, Orlando, FL (United States), 10-17 Aug 2005; Other Information: DOI: 10.1063/1.2354593; (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0094-243X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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