Stripe order in superfluid 3He confined in narrow cylinders

Abstract

We theoretically investigate pairing states of the spin-triplet p-wave superfluid 3He confined in narrow cylinders. The surface-induced distortion and the multiple internal degrees of freedom of the order parameter lead to the occurrence of a stripe structure along the cylinder axis in the superfluid 3He-B phase. We show that in sufficiently small cylinders with an anisotropic surface scattering, the stripe order with broken translational symmetry may be stabilized as the lowest energy state. Periodic spin-current textures caused in this inhomogeneous superfluid phase are also discussed.