Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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TT: Tiefe Temperaturen

TT 22: Symposium Quantum Fluids

TT 22.4: Fachvortrag

Tuesday, March 28, 2006, 16:45–17:15, HSZ 304

Stable textures and defects in slabs of superfluid 3He-A — •Paul Walmsley and Andrei Golov — School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK

We have studied, both experimentally and numerically, various stable textures of the order parameter in superfluid 3He-A in a slab geometry. These textures include continuous vortices and three different types of domain wall as well as specific textures such as the inhomogeneous textures in the centre of a disk-shaped volume where a cylindrical pipe enters the volume along its axis. Our experiments consisted of torsional oscillators, containing disk-shaped slabs of 3He-A, mounted on a rotating nuclear demagnetization cryostat. We were able to detect the response of the orbital texture to applied counterflow which when combined with numerical calculations enabled us to identify the texture present. We found that the texture depended on how it had been prepared. Oriented textures could be prepared by cooling while rotating but domain walls were always present if we cooled (or warmed from the B-phase) without rotation. We will present our measurements of flow-induced critical velocities and compare them to numerical calculations.