Possible role of 3He impurities in solid 4He

Abstract

We use a quantum lattice gas model to describe essential aspects of the motion of 4He atoms and of 3He impurities in solid 4He. This study suggests that 3He impurities bind to defects and promote 4He atoms to interstitial sites which can turn the bosonic quantum disordered crystal into a metastable supersolid. It is suggested that defects and interstitial atoms are produced during the solid 4He nucleation process where the role of 3He impurities (in addition to the cooling rate) is known to be important even at very small (1 ppm) impurity concentration. It is also proposed that such defects can form a glass phase during the 4He solid growth by rapid cooling.

4 two-column Revtex pages, 4 figures. Europhysics Letters (in Press)

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Luttinger Liquid in the Core of Screw Dislocation in Helium-4
• Nonclassical Rotational Inertia in Single Crystal Helium
• The effect of 3He impurities on the nonclassical response to oscillation of solid 4He
• Morphological changes of amphiphilic molecular assemblies induced by chemical reaction
• Effects of ${}^3$He Impurity on Solid ${}^4$He Studied by Compound Torsional Oscillator
• Quantum simulation of 3He impurities and of 4He interstitials in solid 4He