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The A-B Transition of Superfluid Helium-3 in Aerogel and the Effect of Anisotropic Scattering

C. L. Vicente, H. C. Choi, J. S. Xia, W. P. Halperin, N. Mulders, Y. Lee

cond-mat.otherarXiv:cond-mat/0504792

Abstract

We report the results of high frequency acoustic shear impedance measurement on superfluid helium-3 confined in 98% porosity silica aerogel. Using 8.69 MHz continuous wave excitation, we measured the acoustic shear impedance as a function of temperature for the sample pressure of 28.4 and 33.5 bar. We observed the A-B transition on warming in zero magnetic field. Our observations show that the A and B phases in aerogel coexist in a temperature range of about 100 micro-Kelvin in width. We propose that the difference in the relative stability of the A and B phases, arising from anisotropic scattering, can account for our observations.

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