Possible role of $^3He$ impurities in solid $^4He$

POSTER

Abstract

We use a quantum lattice gas model to describe the essential aspects of the motion $^4He$ atoms and of a $^3He$ impurity in solid $^4He$. We find that $^3He$ impurities promote $^4He$ atoms to interstitial sites and this can turn the bosonic quantum crystal into a metastable supersolid. It is suggested that $^3He$ impurity atoms, which produce the interstitial $^4He$ atoms, might have been reabsorbed by pure $^4He$ solid formed during the first stage of a multi-stage solid $^4He$ nucleation process. While we use the ``spin''-wave approximation and low dimensional lattices to illustrate some of the ideas, we argue that the conclusions drawn from these studies may be valid for the real system.

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Authors

  • Efstratios Manousakis

    • MARTECH \& Physics Department, FSU, Tallahassee, FL \& University of Athens, Greece
    • Department of Physics, Florida State University, USA, and Department of Physics, University of Athens, Greece
    • MARTECH, Dept. of Physics, Florida State University and University of Athens, Greece
    • Florida State University
    • MARTECH and Physics Department, FSU, Tallahassee, FL and University of Athens, Greece
    • Physics Department, Florida State University, USA, and Physics Department, University of Athens, Greece