The glassy response of solid He-4 to torsional oscillations
Abstract
We calculated the glassy response of solid He-4 to torsional oscillations assuming a phenomenological glass model. Making only a few assumptions about the distribution of glassy relaxation times in a small subsystem of otherwise rigid solid He-4, we can account for the magnitude of the observed period shift and concomitant dissipation peak in several torsion oscillator experiments. The implications of the glass model for solid He-4 are threefold: (1) The dynamics of solid He-4 is governed by glassy relaxation processes. (2) The distribution of relaxation times varies significantly between different torsion oscillator experiments. (3) The mechanical response of a torsion oscillator does not require a supersolid component to account for the observed anomaly at low temperatures, though we cannot rule out its existence.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0907.4965,
title = {The glassy response of solid He-4 to torsional oscillations},
author = {M. J. Graf and Z. Nussinov and A. V. Balatsky},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0907.4965},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
9 pages, 4 figures, presented at QFS2009