Critical Velocity in 3He-B Vibrating Wire Experiments as Analog of Vacuum Instability in a Slowly Oscillating Electric Field
arXiv:cond-mat/9808050 · doi:10.1134/1.558761
Abstract
The Lancaster experiments with a cylindrical wire moving in superfluid 3He-B are discussed, where the measured critical velocity of pair creation is much below the Landau critical velocity. The phenomenon is shown to be analogous to the instability of the electron-positron vacuum in an adiabatically alternating strong electric potential of both signs, where the positive- and negative-root levels cross and thus the instability treshold is twice less than in the conventional case of a single static potential well.
RevTex file, 6 pages, 4 figures