Abstract
We have investigated the spreading of superfluid4He on top of a polished fused silica plate which is coated by a thin layer of MgF2. Our interferometric experiments indicate that a superfluid4He film of about 100 nm thickness is not able to spread uniformly over a nearly horizontal substrate, and hence these films cannot be governed by the Van der Waals forces only. Even in the stationary state, we observe nonzero (1 – 20 mrad) contact angles which display hysteresis, spatial variation, and strong history dependence.
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