Our research involves the examination of liquid helium when confined to be less than three dimensions. Our experiments work very close to the superfluid transition temperature which is 2.2 degrees Celsius above absolute zero (2.2 Kelvin).
Finite-size effects are manifest when fluctuations near the transition temperature become comparable to the spatial length of confinement. By making the container holding the fluid uniformly small in 1, 2, or all 3 spatial directions, which corresponds to a 2, 1, or 0-dimensional confinment, we can study how the crossover from an unconfined geometry to a lower dimensionality modifies the thermodynamic properties of the liquid.
We are also interested in testing the universality of the superfluid transition. Here we use mixtures of helium-3 and helium-4 to vary the transition temperature between normal and superfluid and attempt to scale the data according to correlation-length scaling theory.
A glossary of scientific terms used throughout the site may be found here.
Please feel free contact us with any questions you may have regarding any of the physics you will find discussed within this site.
