Effect of 3He impurities on the mass decoupling of 4He films

Abstract

We carried out quartz crystal microbalance experiments of a 5 MHz AT-cut crystal for superfluid 4He films on Grafoil (exfoliated graphite) with a small amount of 3He up to 0.40 atoms/nm2. We found that the mass decoupling from oscillating substrate is considerable sensitive even in a small amount of 3He doping. In a 4He film of 29.3 atoms/nm2, we observed a small drop in resonance frequency at T3 of ~0.4 K for a small amplitude, which is attributed to sticking of 3He atoms on the 4He solid atomic layer. For a large amplitude, the 4He solid layer shows a reentrant mass decoupling at TR close to T3. This decoupling can be explained by the suppression of the superfluid counterflow due to the adsorption of 3He atoms on edge dislocations. As the 4He areal density increases, TR shifts to the lower temperature, and vanishes around a 4He film of 39.0 atoms/nm2.