Bulletin of the American Physical Society
2006 APS March Meeting
Monday–Friday, March 13–17, 2006; Baltimore, MD
Session U5: Low Temperature Physics, A Historical Perspective |
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Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: George O. Zimmerman, Boston University Room: Baltimore Convention Center 309 |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:00AM - 8:36AM |
U5.00001: Low Temperature Physics at Yale in the late 30's through the early 50's Invited Speaker: The low temperature program at Yale was initiated by C. T. Lane (1904-1991) in the fall of 1937 when he was appointed to the teaching staff as an instructor in the department of Physics. Following his doctorate from McGill in 1929 he investigated the magnetic susceptibilities of ``soft'' metals supported by the National Research Council of Canada, the Commissioners of the 1851 Exhibition and a Sterling Fellowship at Yale. Arranged by Louis McKeehan, with {\$}5000 from the new George Sheffield research fund, he started the construction of a Kapitza type helium liquefier. The machine was largely completed in the fall of 1939, yet liquid helium was not made until early December 1940 due to the need for extensive on line purification of the gas. Returning in 1945 from war research, Lane and Henry A. Fairbank (Ph.D 1944) continued the metals work along with new thrusts into Second Sound , properties of helium$^{ }$three impurities in liquid helium and starting in the 50's on rotating He II. In 1933 both Lane and Onsager were awarded Sterling Fellowships, which initiated a stimulating experimental- theoretical exchange continuing until they both retired. The best-known example was the rediscovery at Yale of the deHaas-van Alphen effect, previously observed only in bismuth, in zinc; where upon Onsager and his students provided new insights into our understanding of the Fermi surface of metals. With the development of new instrumentation one observed vast changes in experimental style during this period. The evolution of the production of liquid helium from Lane's device though the Collins machine to the commodity business of today now makes experiments of huge size and importance possible. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:36AM - 9:12AM |
U5.00002: Rotating Superfluids Invited Speaker: Rotation of a fluid, particularly studying phenomena affected by Coriolis forces, plays a significant role in nearly all branches of fluid dynamics. Quantum fluids are no exception, as evidenced by remarkable devices such as ``Rota'' in Helsinki. This talk concerns the early days of rotating superfluids, starting long before superfluid helium-3 appeared on the scene. I will attempt to describe some of the early experiments, how the apparatus was designed, and what the experiments revealed. There has been so much activity in this area, I will discuss mostly experiments in my own fields of interest. Time will not permit an exhaustive review of this fascinating subject. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:12AM - 9:48AM |
U5.00003: Fritz London's Legacy at Duke University Invited Speaker: When 3He became available in small quantities after WWII Fritz London, Professor at Duke University since 1939, became very interested in its properties in the liquid and solid phases, as contrasted with those of 4He. His influence and that of his colleague Walter Gordy led to the appointment of William Fairbank in 1952, who was able to verify experimentally the prediction on the Fermi degeneracy of liquid 3He below 1K, a few weeks before London's death in 1954. With his students and associates, Fairbank carried out a number of important experiments which became classics, several of which will be described. At Duke he also started planning other experiments inspired by London's predictions. After W. Fairbank's departure for Stanford in 1959, further research on liquid and solid 3He and 3He-4He mixtures was carried out by his successors at Duke University and some of the results in the sixties will be briefly described. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:48AM - 10:24AM |
U5.00004: Liquid Helium 3 and Solid Helium at Yale and Beyond Invited Speaker: Many of the foundations of low temperature physics in the latter half of the twentieth century were built at Yale University under the leadership of Professor Cecil T. Lane who came to Yale in 1932 and Henry A. Fairbank who obtained his Ph.D. at Yale in 1944 under Lane's guidance. This discussion will mainly treat the contributions of Henry Fairbank and his students during the period between 1954 and 1963, when Henry Fairbank left Yale to become chairman of the Physics Dept. at Duke University. Following World War II small amounts of helium three became available to low temperature experimenters. Henry Fairbank’s graduate students were provided with the opportunity to investigate second sound in dilute and later concentrated mixtures of helium three in superfluid helium four. These measurements showed strong effects of the phase separation in helium 3 - helium 4 mixtures previously discovered in the laboratory of William Fairbank (a student of Lane and a brother of Henry Fairbank). As more helium three became available, studies of pure helium three were performed, including measurements of the thermal conductivity, the density and the specific heat. Early evidence for the melting curve minimum was found. The main emphasis in this work was to search for Fermi liquid behavior. Much of the later work in this area was performed by the group of John Wheatley at the University of Illinois. In studies of solid helium four at Yale, a surprising observation was made. Hitherto it had been thought that hcp was the stable phase throughout the low temperature part of the phase diagram. It was found via ultrasound experiments that a small silver of bcc solid existed at the lowest pressures. While this author was a graduate student at Yale, Henry Fairbank pointed out to him the possibility of cooling helium three via adiabatic compression from the liquid into the solid phase. (Pomeranchuk Cooling). A brief discussion is given of the use of this technique in the discovery of superfluid helium 3 by Osheroff, Richardson and the author at Cornell. [Preview Abstract] |
Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:24AM - 11:00AM |
U5.00005: Panel Discussion: Memories and Comments Gerhard L. Saligner, John D. Rappy, Robert H. Romer, George B. Yntema \\ [Preview Abstract] |
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