Abstract
We have studied cavitation, i.e. bubble nucleation, by focusing ultrasound hurts in normal liquid helium 3 at temperatures down to 40 mK. As in helium 4, cavitation is found to be stochastic, with a cavitation probability 0.5 at a given value of the sound amplitude, which we define as a “cavitation threshold”. This threshold is found significantly lower in helium 3 than in helium 4, a result which agrees with theoretical predictions of a spinodal limit at - 3.1 bar in helium 3 instead of- 9.5 bar in helium 4- We also measured the temperature variation of this cavitation threshold; it decreases with temperature as expected for a thermally activated nucleation process. We have not yet found any evidence for a crossover toward cavitation by quantum tunneling below 120 mK as predicted by several authors; if confirmed, it might indicate that the superfluid coherence plays a role in quantum cavitation.
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Caupin, F., Roche, P., Marchand, S. et al. Cavitation in Normal Liquid Helium 3. Journal of Low Temperature Physics 113, 473–478 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022556213131
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022556213131