Bauerle, C. and Bunkov, Yuryi M. and Fisher, Shaun N. and Godfrin, Henry (2000) The 'Grenoble' cosmological experiment - The Kibble-Zurek scenario in superfluid He-3. In: Topological Defects and the non-equilibrium dynamics of symmetry breaking phase transitions. NATO ADVANCED SCIENCE INSTITUTES SERIES, SERIES C, MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCES, 549 . Springer, Dordrecht, pp. 105-120. ISBN 978-0-7923-6204-3Full text not available from this repository.
We describe in this lecture neutron irradiation experiments performed on superluid He-3-B at ultralow temperatures. The measurement of the thermal energy released by the neutron-He-3 nuclear reaction reveals the existence of an energy deficit. We propose that this deficit can be ascribed to the formation energy of vortices, these topological defects being created by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism as the region heated to the normal state by the neutron irradiation recrosses the superfluid transition. A quantitative agreement is found with Zurek's predictions for the density of topological defects created during a rapid quench through a symmetry-breaking phase transition.
|Item Type:||Contribution in Book/Report/Proceedings|
|Subjects:||Q Science > QC Physics|
|Departments:||Faculty of Science and Technology > Physics|
|Deposited By:||Dr Richard P. Haley|
|Deposited On:||03 Feb 2009 11:29|
|Last Modified:||07 Jan 2015 20:18|
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