Quasiclassical theory of the A-B phase boundary of superfluid 3He

✍ Scribed by N. Schopohl; D. Waxman

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1991
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 439 KB
• Volume: 169
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0921-4526
• DOI: 10.1016/0921-4526(91)90224-3

✦ Synopsis

The invited talk was given by N. Schopohl.

It is an experimental fact that there exists a large range of temperatures and pressures where the A and B phases of superfluid 3He coexist and are almost free of thermal excitations.

The phase boundary that forms between the two drastically different bulk phases possesses many interesting features.

The gap seen by a ballistic excitation traversing the interface is dependent upon the angle of its trajectory. This, together with the complex nature of the triplet Cooper-pair wavefunction interpolating between the A and the B phases provides a rich variety of phenomena and also leads to the formation of bound states of excitations trapped within the interfacial region. In this paper we review the existing description of the A-B phase boundary and discuss work of relevance to the recent experiments carried out by Boyd and Swift [Phys. Rev. Lett. 64 (1990) 8941.