Superfluid helium-4

Superfluid helium-4 is the superfluid form of helium-4, an isotope of the element helium. A superfluid is a state of matter in which the matter behaves like a fluid with zero viscosity. The substance, which looks like a normal liquid, flows without friction past any surface, which allows it to continue to circulate over obstructions and through pores in containers which hold it, subject only to its own inertia.

Known as a major facet in the study of quantum hydrodynamics and macroscopic quantum phenomena, the superfluidity effect was discovered by Pyotr Kapitsa and John F. Allen, and Don Misener in 1937. It has since been described through phenomenological and microscopic theories. The formation of the superfluid is known to be related to the formation of a Bose–Einstein condensate. This is made obvious by the fact that superfluidity occurs in liquid helium-4 at far higher temperatures than it does in helium-3. Each atom of helium-4 is a boson particle, by virtue of its zero spin. Helium-3, however, is a fermion particle, which can form bosons only by pairing with itself at much lower temperatures, in a process similar to the electron pairing in superconductivity.

In the 1950s, Hall and Vinen performed experiments establishing the existence of quantized vortex lines in superfluid helium. In the 1960s, Rayfield and Reif established the existence of quantized vortex rings. Packard has observed the intersection of vortex lines with the free surface of the fluid, and Avenel and Varoquaux have studied the Josephson effect in superfluid helium-4. In 2006 a group at the University of Maryland visualized quantized vortices by using small tracer particles of solid hydrogen.

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