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Updated: Jul 15, 2026

Determining the Mechanical Strength of Ultra-Fine-Grained Metals
Published on: November 22, 2021
Superfluidity of grain boundaries in solid 4He
L Pollet1, M Boninsegni, A B Kuklov
1Theoretische Physik, ETH Zürich, 8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
Abstract:
By large-scale quantum Monte Carlo simulations we show that grain boundaries in 4He crystals are generically superfluid at low temperature, with a transition temperature of the order of approximately 0.5 K at the melting pressure; nonsuperfluid grain boundaries are found only for special orientations of the grains. We also find that close vicinity to the melting line is not a necessary condition for superfluid grain boundaries, and a grain boundary in direct contact with the superfluid liquid at the melting curve is found to be mechanically stable and the grain-boundary superfluidity observed by Sasaki et al. [Science 313, 1098 (2006)10.1126/science.1130879] is not just a crack filled with superfluid.
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