Gamma-ray laser moves a step closer to reality

A physicist at the University of California, Riverside, has performed calculations showing hollow spherical bubbles filled with a gas of positronium atoms are stable in liquid helium.

Unusual sound waves discovered in quantum liquids

Ordinary sound waves—small oscillations of density—can propagate through all fluids, causing the molecules in the fluid to compress at regular intervals. Now physicists have theoretically shown that in one-dimensional ...

New clues emerge in 30-year-old superconductor mystery

One of the greatest mysteries of experimental physics is how so-called high-temperature superconducting materials work. Despite their name, high-temperature superconductors—materials that carry electrical current with no ...

The mysterious 'action at a distance' between liquid containers

For several years, it has been known that superfluid helium housed in reservoirs located next to each other acts collectively, even when the channels connecting the reservoirs are too narrow and too long to allow for substantial ...

The perfect liquid -- now even more perfect

Ultra hot quark-gluon-plasma, generated by heavy-ion collisions in particle accelerators, is supposed to be the "most perfect fluid" in the world. Previous theories imposed a limit on how "liquid" fluids can be. Recent results ...

Particle collider: Black hole or crucial machine?

(AP) -- When launched to great fanfare nearly a year ago, some feared the Large Hadron Collider would create a black hole that would suck in the world. It turns out the Hadron may be the black hole.

Stretching makes the superconductor

When people imagine "new materials," they typically think of chemistry. But UConn physicist Ilya Sochnikov has another suggestion: mechanics.

Slippery superfluids push jets to breaking point

A unique type of helium that can flow without being affected by friction has helped a KAUST team better understand the transformation of rapidly moving liquids into tiny droplets.

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Liquid helium

Helium exists in liquid form only at extremely low temperatures. The boiling point and critical point depend on the isotope of the helium; see the table below for values. The density of liquid helium at its boiling point and 1 atm is approximately 0.125 g/mL

Helium-4 was first liquefied on 10 July 1908 by Dutch physicist Heike Kamerlingh Onnes. Liquid helium-4 is used as a cryogenic refrigerant; it is produced commercially for use in superconducting magnets such as those used in MRI or NMR. It is liquefied using the Hampson-Linde cycle.[citation needed]

The temperatures required to liquefy helium are low because of the weakness of the attraction between helium atoms. The interatomic forces are weak in the first place because helium is a noble gas, but the interatomic attraction is reduced even further by quantum effects, which are important in helium because of its low atomic mass. The zero point energy of the liquid is less if the atoms are less confined by their neighbors; thus the liquid can lower its ground state energy by increasing the interatomic distance. But at this greater distance, the effect of interatomic forces is even weaker.[citation needed]

Because of the weak interatomic forces, helium remains liquid down to absolute zero; helium solidifies only under great pressure. At sufficiently low temperature, both helium-3 and helium-4 undergo a transition to a superfluid phase (see table below).[citation needed]

Liquid helium-3 and helium-4 are not completely miscible below 0.9 K at the saturated vapor pressure. Below this temperature a mixture of the two isotopes undergoes phase separation into a lighter normal fluid that is mostly helium-3, and a denser superfluid that is mostly helium-4. (This occurs because the system can lower its enthalpy by separating.) At low temperatures, the helium-4 rich phase may contain up to 6% of helium-3 in solution, which makes possible the existence of the dilution refrigerator, capable of reaching temperatures of a few mK above absolute zero.[citation needed]

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