The giant plasticity of a quantum crystal

Abstract

When submitted to large stresses at high temperature, usual crystals may irreversibly deform. This phenomenon is known as plasticity and it is due to the motion of crystal defects such as dislocations. We have discovered that, in the absence of impurities and in the zero temperature limit, helium 4 crystals present a giant plasticity that is anisotropic and reversible. Direct measurements on oriented single crystals show that their resistance to shear nearly vanishes in one particular direction because dislocations glide freely parallel to the basal planes of the hexagonal structure. This plasticity disappears as soon as traces of helium 3 impurities bind to the dislocations or if their motion is damped by collisions with thermal phonons.

accepted by Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (1)

• Low Temperature Shear Modulus Changes in Solid 4-He and Connection to Supersolidity

Cited by in corpus (27)

• Simulation and understanding of quantum crystals
• Dislocation networks in helium-4 crystals
• Resistivity and magnetoresistance of FeSe single crystals under Helium-gas pressure
• Critical dislocation speed in helium-4 crystals
• Quantum Plasticity and Supersolid Response in Helium-4
• Optical microscope and tapered fiber coupling apparatus for a dilution refrigerator
• Quantum effects on dislocation motion from Ring-Polymer Molecular Dynamics
• Coexistence of density wave and superfluid order in a dipolar Fermi gas
• Supertransport by Superclimbing Dislocations in ${}^4$He: When All Dimensions Matter
• Multiple Mode Torsional Oscillator Studies and Evidence for Supersolidity in Bulk 4He
• Frequency-dependent Study of Solid Helium-4 Contained in a Rigid Double-torus Torsional Oscillator
• Plastic response by dislocation glide in solid helium under dc strain rate loading
• The Plastic Flow of Solid 4He through a Porous Membrane
• Emergence of Luttinger Liquid behavior of a superclimbing dislocation
• The Observed Vibron Shift in Helium-Hydrogen Mixtures are due to Quantum Nuclear and Localisation Effects, not bonding
• Comment on "Giant Plasticity of a Quantum Crystal"
• Evaporative cooling to a Rydberg crystal close to its ground state
• Effect of Rotation on Elastic Moduli of Solid ${}^4$He
• Combined effects of Sr substitution and pressure on the ground states in CaFe${}_2$As${}_2$
• Absence of off-diagonal long-range order in hcp ${}^4$He dislocation cores
• Superfluid-like TO Responses in Rotating Solid Helium
• Characterization of the Surface of Moving solid 4He
• Simultaneous investigation of shear modulus and torsional resonance of solid 4He
• Transverse Quantum Superfluids
• Dislocation Mobility and Anomalous Shear Modulus Effect in ${}^4$He Crystals
• Low frequency elastic measurements on solid ${}^4$He in Vycor using a torsional oscillator
• Superfluid Field response to Edge dislocation motion