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Published on: December 12, 2013
Surface-Induced Near-Field Scaling in the Knudsen Layer of a Rarefied Gas
R R Gazizulin1, O Maillet1, X Zhou1
1Université Grenoble Alpes, Institut Néel CNRS, 25 rue des Martyrs, BP 166, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France.
Abstract:
We report on experiments performed within the Knudsen boundary layer of a low-pressure gas. The noninvasive probe we use is a suspended nanoelectromechanical string, which interacts with ^{4}He gas at cryogenic temperatures. When the pressure P is decreased, a reduction of the damping force below molecular friction ∝P had been first reported in Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 136101 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.113.136101 and never reproduced since. We demonstrate that this effect is independent of geometry, but dependent on temperature. Within the framework of kinetic theory, this reduction is interpreted as a rarefaction phenomenon, carried through the boundary layer by a deviation from the usual Maxwell-Boltzmann equilibrium distribution induced by surface scattering. Adsorbed atoms are shown to play a key role in the process, which explains why room temperature data fail to reproduce it.
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