Studies of the decay of persistent currents in unsaturated films of superfluid /sup 4/He

Journal Article · Thu May 01 04:00:00 EDT 1980 · Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States)

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.21.3902· OSTI ID:5481042

Ekholm, D T; Hallock, R B

We report the results of systematic measurements of the decay of persistent currents of superfluid /sup 4/He films as a function of both temperature and film thickness. For film currents where the fractional decay per decade is less than 20%, the data can be represented by v=v/sub 0/(1-xi x ln(t/t/sub 0/)). For stronger decays we document deviations for the lnt behavior and observe that the empirical rule v=A(B+t)/sup -n/ reasonably represents the data over the full range of our studies. The Iordanskii-Langer-Fisher thermal fluctuation theory is examined in the vortex pair model, and inadequacies of the theory are discussed. A comparison is also made to the predictions of Donnelly, Hills, and Roberts.

• Research Organization: Laboratory for Low Temperature Physics, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003
• OSTI ID: 5481042
• Journal Information: Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States), Journal Name: Phys. Rev., B: Condens. Matter; (United States) Vol. 21:9; ISSN PRBMD
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640450* -- Fluid Physics-- Superfluidity
75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS
SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND SUPERFLUIDITY
DIMENSIONS
EVEN-EVEN NUCLEI
FILM FLOW
FLUID FLOW
FLUIDS
HELIUM 4
HELIUM II
HELIUM ISOTOPES
ISOTOPES
LIGHT NUCLEI
NUCLEI
QUANTUM FLUIDS
STABLE ISOTOPES
SUPERFLUIDITY
TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE
THICKNESS