Neutron-scattering investigation of the excitation spectrum of liquid helium

Abstract

The results of the investigation of the temperature evolution of the scattering law S(Q, ω) of superfluid helium measured in the wave-vector range 0.3 < Q < 0.8 Å⁻¹ and helium temperatures from 1.0 to 2.2 K are reported. The investigations have been performed on the high-flux reactor at the Institut Laue-Langevin (France) with the IN6 neutron inelastic-scattering spectrometer. The deviation of the experimental scattering law of liquid helium from the damping harmonic oscillator model, which was previously observed independently in the experiments with the IN6 spectrometer [1] and with the DIN-2PI spectrometer (at the IBR-2 reactor, Dubna, Russia) [2, 3] and were more recently called extrapeak, has been corroborated. The temperature dependence of the extrapeak parameters has been determined. This dependence makes it possible to propose hypotheses on the nature of the extrapeak.