English

3He on preplated graphite

Other Condensed Matter 2016-11-23 v1

Abstract

By using the diffusion Monte Carlo method, we obtained the full phase diagram of 3^3He on top of graphite preplated with a solid layer of 4^4He. All the 4^4He atoms of the substrate were explicitly considered and allowed to move during the simulation. We found that the ground state is a liquid of density 0.007 ±\pm 0.001 \AA2^{-2}, in good agreement with available experimental data. This is significantly different from the case of 3^3He on clean graphite, in which both theory and experiment agree on the existence of a gas-liquid transition at low densities. Upon an increase in 3^3He density, we predict a first-order phase transition between a dense liquid and a registered 7/12 phase, the 4/7 phase being found metastable in our calculations. At larger second-layer densities, a final transition is produced to an incommensurate triangular phase.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1610.06045,
  title  = {3He on preplated graphite},
  author = {M. C. Gordillo and J. Boronat},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.06045},
  year   = {2016}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:25:27.333Z