Nearly frictionless transport of glassy solid helium at low temperature regime

Abstract

Glassy matter, as subjected to high shear rates, exhibit shear-thinning: i.e., the viscosity diminishes with increasing shear rate. One possible outcome for almost vanishing viscosity is the nearly frictionless transport in micropores subjected to some surface conditions. Here we show that, by treating the glass as a shear-thinning matter and using the transition rate dependent model together with the boundary perturbation method, we can observe a sudden change of the shearing characteristics (which directly relates to the resistance and the time or rate dependent shear modulus) at low temperature regime (ranged from 30 to 50 mK) for corresponding physical activation energy. If the solid helium could be treated as glassy matter at very low temperature regime then our results resemble those recently reported by Day and Beamish [J. Day, J. Beamish, Nature 450 (2007) 853].