Giant isochoric compressibility of solid He4 due to superclimb of dislocations

ORAL

Abstract

In the experiment on superfluid transport in solid He4 [PRL {\bf 100}, 235301 (2008)], Ray and Hallock observed an {\it anomalously large isochoric compressibility}: the supersolid samples demonstrated a significant and apparently spatially uniform response of density and pressure to chemical potential $\mu$, applied locally through Vycor ``electrodes.'' We propose that the effect is due to {\it superclimb}: edge dislocations can climb because of mass transport along superfluid cores and, as a result, the crystal can accumulate extra matter which is, practically, independent of the dislocation density, provided it is uniform. We corroborate this scenario by {\it ab initio} simulations of an edge dislocation in solid He4 at $T=0.5K$ with Burgers vector along the C-axis: its superfluid core (split into partials) climbed in response to changes of $\mu$ [1]. At low $T$ the effect must be suppressed due to a crossover to the smooth dislocation, with the temperature scale determined by the energy of jog-antijog pair. \\[4pt] [1] \c{S}.G. S\"{o}yler, A. B. Kuklov, L. Pollet, N. V. Prokof'ev, and B. V. Svistunov , Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 103}, 175301 (2009).

*We acknowledge support from NSF (PHY-0653183 and PHY-0653135), CUNY and the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Authors

  • A.B. Kuklov

    • CSI, CUNY
  • \c{S}.G. S\"{o}yler

    • ICTP, Italy
  • L. Pollet

    • Harvard
  • Nikolay Prokof'ev

    • UMass,Amherst, and Kurchatov Institute, Moscow
    • University of Massachusetts, Amherst
  • Boris Svistunov

    • UMass, Amherst, and Kurchatov Institute, Moscow
    • University of Massachusetts, Amherst
    • University of Massachusetts Amherst