Nucleation in dilute 3He-4He liquid mixtures at low temperatures

TL;DR

This study investigates the nucleation process in dilute 3He-4He liquid mixtures at low temperatures, focusing on critical supersaturation and the thermal-quantum crossover, comparing different nucleation seeds.

Contribution

It analyzes the roles of 3He droplets and 4He vortex lines as nucleation seeds, highlighting their respective abilities to reproduce experimental data on nucleation.

Findings

T* matches experiments with 3He droplets as seeds

Dx matches experiments with 4He vortex lines as seeds

Neither seed configuration reproduces all experimental data simultaneously

Abstract

We present a study of phase separation from supersaturated 3He-4He liquid mixtures at low temperatures addressing both the degree of critical supersaturation Dx and the thermal-to-quantum crossover temperature T* for the nucleation process. Two different nucleation seeds are investigated, namely 3He droplets and 4He vortex lines with cores filled with 3He. We have found that the experimental T* is reproduced when we consider that nucleation proceeds from 3He droplets, whereas Dx is reproduced when we consider 4He vortex lines filled with 3He. However, neither nucleation configuration is able to simultaneously reproduce the current experimental information on Dx and T*.