The glassy response of double torsion oscillators in solid Helium-4

Abstract

Single and double torsion oscillators have been used successfully to measure the anomalous change in resonant frequency and accompanying dissipation in solid He-4. We present a glass description of the mechanical anomalies found in torsion oscillator measurements. Our results show that it is not necessary to invoke a supersolid interpretation to explain these mechanical anomalies. Previously, we demonstrated that the back-action of a glassy subsystem present in solid He-4 can account for frequency change and dissipation peak in many single torsion oscillator experiments. Here, we show that the same glassy back-action can explain the experimental results of the composite torsion oscillator developed by the Rutgers group, which measures the response of solid He-4 at the in-phase mode f1=496 Hz and out-of-phase mode f2=1173 Hz.

QFS 2010 contribution; Revision has corrected typos and expanded introduction. To appear in Journal of Low Temperature Physics