Specific Heat of Disordered Superfluid ${}^3$He

Abstract

The specific heat of superfluid ${}^3$He, disordered by a silica aerogel, is found to have a sharp discontinuity marking the thermodynamic transition to superfluidity at a temperature reduced from that of bulk ${}^3$He. The magnitude of the discontinuity is also suppressed. This disorder effect can be understood from the Ginzburg-Landau theory which takes into account elastic quasiparticle scattering suppressing both the transition temperature and the amplitude of the order parameter. We infer that the limiting temperature dependence of the specific heat is linear at low temperatures in the disordered superfluid state, consistent with predictions of gapless excitations everywhere on the Fermi surface.

accpeted for publication in Physical Review Letters

References in corpus (5)

• Models for Superfluid ${}^3$He in Aerogel
• Phase Diagram of the Superfluid Phases of 3He in 98% Aerogel
• Impurity Effects on the A_1-A_2 Splitting of Superfluid 3He in Aerogel
• Suppression of Superconductivity in UPt_3 Single Crystals
• Heat Capacity of ^3He in Aerogel

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Surface Specific Heat of ${}^3$He and Andreev Bound States
• Impurity Effects of Aerogel in Superfluid ${}^3$He
• Chiral Phases of Superfluid 3He in an Anisotropic Medium
• Superfluid 3He in Aerogel
• Ultrasound attenuation of superfluid ${}^3$He in aerogel
• Spin-Nernst Effect in Time-Reversal-Invariant Topological Superconductors
• NMR Frequency Shifts and Phase Identification in Superfluid ${}^3$He
• Dissipation signatures of the normal and superfluid phases in torsion pendulum experiments with 3He in aerogel
• Large composite fermion effective mass at filling factor 5/2
• A Simple Experimental Setup for Simultaneous Superfluid-response and Heat-capacity Measurements for Helium in Confined Geometries
• The Heat Capacity of ${}^3$He-B in Silica Aerogel