Proceedings

Geysers of Helium burst as if liquid

Geysers of Helium burst as if liquid

New experiments on the flow of solid He through a microscopic hole reveal a mechanism that triggers the geysers based on the breakdown of a plug located upstream of the source chamber.

The vacuum expansion of solid helium through a micrometric orifice was suggested as a mean to inject excess vacancies into the solid bulk [R. Grisenti et al, J. Electr. Spectr. 129 (2003) 201]. But while the He flow seems smooth, unexpected periodic bursts out of the orifice (geyser effect) are observed during these vacuum expansion experiments.

The results presented in this Highlight paper indicate that the geyser collapse does not occur near the orifice, as previously suggested, but at a plug in the feed line upstream of the source chamber. Each collapse is triggered by the increasing vacancy concentration which makes the solid behave much as a liquid.

On this basis, Benedek, Nieto and Toennies argue that vacuum expansion provides a novel approach for investigating exotic non-equilibrium phases of quantum solids such as helium.

This was our first experience of publishing with EPJ Web of Conferences. We contacted the publisher in the middle of September, just one month prior to the Conference, but everything went through smoothly. We have had published MNPS Proceedings with different publishers in the past, and would like to tell that the EPJ Web of Conferences team was probably the best, very quick, helpful and interactive. Typically, we were getting responses from EPJ Web of Conferences team within less than an hour and have had help at every production stage.
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On behalf of the Organizing and Program Committees and Editorial Team of MNPS-2019, Dr. Alexey B. Nadykto, Moscow State Technological University “STANKIN”, Moscow, Russia. EPJ Web of Conferences vol. 224 (2019)

ISSN: 2100-014X (Electronic Edition)

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