Saturday, May 21, 2011

Lecture on superfluids

Last week I gave half a lecture on the phase diagram of helium and superfluidity to a second year undergraduate class on Thermodynamics and Condensed Matter Physics. The lecture includes:
  • a discussion of the differences between the phase diagrams of 3He and 4He
  • a list of the 4 Nobel Prizes awarded for work in superfluidity [Landau, Kapitsa, Osheroff, Richardson, and Lee, Leggett] (I did not include BECs but should have]
  • a video of the superfluid transition
  • a discussion of an amazing experiment on the space shuttle which determined the critical exponent for the specific heat at the superfluid (lambda) transition to five significant figures.

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