Abstract
The effects of confinement, disorder, and reduced dimensionality upon quantum fluids have been studied by the adsorption of liquid helium in porous media. The effects of extreme, nanoscale confinement upon its microscopic excitations are not presently understood. Several previous experiments have suggested that at sufficiently low temperature, the roton mean free path is set by the restricted geometry. Here we show that the lifetime of the roton excitation is unaffected when superfluid helium is confined within cylindrical pores only a few nanometers in diameter. The temperature dependence of its lifetime are found to be identical to the bulk fluid, implying that the lifetime is not set by the scale of the confinement. Our results demonstrate that the rotons in the pore center propagate without being modified by the confining media, unlike the collective excitations of classical fluids.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 144509 |
Journal | Physical Review B |
Volume | 95 |
Issue number | 14 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Apr 20 2017 |
Funding
This research used resources at the Spallation Neutron Source, a U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science User Facility operated by the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This report was prepared by Indiana University under Award No. 70NANB10H255 from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department of Commerce. M.S.B. acknowledges support under NSF Grant No. DGE-1069091.