Relative Evaporation Probabilities of 3He and 4He from the Surface of Superfluid 4He

Abstract

We report a preliminary experiment which demonstrates that 3He atoms in Andreev states are evaporated by high-energy (E/k_B ~ 10.2 K) phonons in a quantum evaporation process similar to that which occurs in pure 4He. Under conditions of low 3He coverage, high-energy phonons appear to evaporate 3He and 4He atoms with equal probability. However, we have not managed to detect any 3He atoms that have been evaporated by rotons, and conclude that the probability of a roton evaporating a 3He atom is less than 2% of the probability that it evaporates a 4He atom.