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Discovery of the Acoustic Faraday Effect in Superfluid 3He-B

Y. Lee, T. M. Haard, W. P. Halperin, J. A. Sauls

cond-mat.supr-conarXiv:cond-mat/9902129

Abstract

We report the discovery of the acoustic Faraday effect in superfluid 3He-B. The observation of this effect provides the first direct evidence for propagating transverse acoustic waves in liquid 3He, a mode first predicted by Landau in 1957. The Faraday rotation is large and observable because of spontaneously broken spin-orbit symmetry in 3He-B. We compare the experimental observations with a simulation of the transverse acoustic impedance that includes the field-induced circular birefringence of transverse waves.

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