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Updated: Apr 15, 2026

Combining Microfluidics and Microrheology to Determine Rheological Properties of Soft Matter during Repeated Phase Transitions
Published on: April 19, 2018
Anisotropic phases of superfluid ^{3}he in compressed aerogel
J I A Li1, A M Zimmerman1, J Pollanen1
1Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois 60208, USA.
Abstract:
It has been shown that the relative stabilities of various superfluid states of ^{3}He can be influenced by anisotropy in a silica aerogel framework. We prepared a suite of aerogel samples compressed up to 30% for which we performed pulsed NMR on ^{3}He imbibed within the aerogel. We identified A and B phases and determined their magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams as a function of strain. From these results, we infer that the B phase is distorted by negative strain forming an anisotropic superfluid state more stable than the A phase.
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