Cosmology, Particle Physics and Superfluid 3He
Abstract
Many direct parallels connect superfluid 3He with the field theories describing the physical vacuum, gauge fields and elementary fermions. Superfluid He exhibits a variety of topological defects which can be detected with single-defect sensitivity. Modern scenarios of defect-mediated baryogenesis can be simulated by the interaction of the 3He vortices and domain walls with fermionic quasiparticles. Formation of defects in a symmetry-breaking phase transition in the early Universe, which could be responsible for large-scale structure formation and for microwave-background anisotropy, also may be modelled in the laboratory. This is supported by the recent observation of vortex formation in neutron-irradiated 3He-B where the "primordial fireball" is formed in an exothermic nuclear reaction.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9607212,
title = {Cosmology, Particle Physics and Superfluid 3He},
author = {G. E. Volovik},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9607212},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Invited talk at LT-21 Conference, 20 pages, 3 figures available at request, compressed ps file of the camera-ready format with 3 figures is at ftp://boojum.hut.fi/pub/publications/lowtemp/LTL-96006.ps.gz