Hydrodynamics of Superfluid Helium in a Single Nanohole

Abstract

The flow of liquid helium through a single nanohole with radius smaller than 25 nm was studied for the first time. Mass flow was induced by applying a pressure difference of up to 1.4 bar across a 50 nm thick Si3N4 membrane and was measured directly by means of mass spectrometry. In liquid He I, we experimentally show that the fluid is not clamped by the short pipe with diameter-to-length ratio D/L~1, despite the small diameter of the nanohole. This viscous flow is quantitatively understood by making use of a model of flow in short pipes. In liquid He II, a two-fluid model for mass flow is used to extract the superfluid velocity in the nanohole for different pressure heads at temperatures close to the superfluid transition. These velocities compare well to existing data for the critical superflow of liquid helium in other confined systems.

To appear in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (2)

• Helium-4 Luttinger liquids in nanopores
• Critical velocities in superfluids and the nucleation of vortices

Cited by in corpus (18)

• From GPE to KPZ: finite temperature dynamical structure factor of the 1D Bose gas
• One-dimensional liquid ${}^4$He: dynamical properties beyond Luttinger liquid theory
• Contact resistance and phase slips in mesoscopic superfluid atom transport
• Statistical and computational intelligence approach to analytic continuation in Quantum Monte Carlo
• Local Superfluidity at the Nanoscale
• Superfluid nanomechanical resonator for quantum nanofluidics
• Luttinger liquid behavior of one-dimensional 3He
• Quantum Monte Carlo measurement of the chemical potential of helium-4
• Critical Flow and Dissipation in a Quasi-One-Dimensional Superfluid
• Quantum Phase Slips: from condensed matter to ultracold quantum gases
• A Luttinger Liquid Core Inside Helium-4 Filled Nanopores
• Enhanced superfluid response of parahydrogen in nanoscale confinement
• Dimensional Reduction of Helium-4 Inside Argon Plated MCM-41 Nanopores
• Quasi-one-dimensional ${}^4$He in nanopores
• Dissipation in mesoscale superfluids
• Uniaxial modulation and the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition
• A shell model for superfluids in rough-walled nanopores
• Friedel oscillations in one-dimensional 4He