Surface-condition-mediated supercooling of the A-B transition in confined superfluid helium-3
Abstract
Chiral p-wave superconductors and superfluids are central model systems in the search for topological quantum matter, but in reduced dimensions their properties are inseparable from the boundary conditions imposed by surrounding surfaces. Superfluid 3He provides a uniquely clean, well-established spin-triplet p-wave condensate in which these boundary conditions can be engineered directly. Here, we use a fourth-sound Helmholtz resonator to study the A--B phase transition of 3He confined to a 1.8 μm cavity after preplating the internal surfaces with ∼4 atomic layers of 4He. In contrast to our previous fourth-sound measurements, which showed no resolvable hysteresis in the transition temperature, the preplated device exhibits a clear separation between cooling and warming transition temperatures together with stochastic run-to-run variations. The hysteresis decreases toward the highest pressures studied, consistent with previous observations of the pressure dependence of 4He-mediated quasiparticle boundary scattering. These results demonstrate that surface preparation can qualitatively modify first-order transition kinetics in confined 3He, making boundary conditions an experimentally accessible control parameter for metastability and for future studies of reduced-dimension topological superfluid states.
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BibTeX
@misc{malhotra2026surfaceconditionmediated,
title = {{Surface-condition-mediated supercooling of the A-B transition in confined superfluid helium-3}},
author = {Daksh Malhotra and Aymar Muhikira and Alexander J. Shook and John P. Davis},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = sep,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.19471},
eprint = {2609.19471},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19471},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Surface-condition-mediated supercooling of the A-B transition in confined superfluid helium-3
AU - Daksh Malhotra
AU - Aymar Muhikira
AU - Alexander J. Shook
AU - John P. Davis
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/09/16
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.19471
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.19471
AB - Chiral p-wave superconductors and superfluids are central model systems in the search for topological quantum matter, but in reduced dimensions their properties are inseparable from the boundary conditions imposed by surrounding surfaces. Superfluid ^3He provides a uniquely clean, well-established spin-triplet p-wave condensate in which these boundary conditions can be engineered directly. Here, we use a fourth-sound Helmholtz resonator to study the A--B phase transition of ^3He confined to a 1.8 μm cavity after preplating the internal surfaces with ∼4 atomic layers of ^4He. In contrast to our previous fourth-sound measurements, which showed no resolvable hysteresis in the transition temperature, the preplated device exhibits a clear separation between cooling and warming transition temperatures together with stochastic run-to-run variations. The hysteresis decreases toward the highest pressures studied, consistent with previous observations of the pressure dependence of ^4He-mediated quasiparticle boundary scattering. These results demonstrate that surface preparation can qualitatively modify first-order transition kinetics in confined ^3He, making boundary conditions an experimentally accessible control parameter for metastability and for future studies of reduced-dimension topological superfluid states.
ER -