Possible low-temperature nearly frictionless states of locally amorphous solid 4He in nanopores

Abstract

It has been recently reported that there might be amorphous solid 4He formed in around 4.7 ± 0.15 nm pore [J. Bossy, T. Hansen, H.R. Glyde, Phys. Rev. B 81, 184507 (2010)]. By treating the solid 4He in confined nanopores at very low temperature locally as an amorphous matter and using the verified transition-state model together with the specific activation energy and volume, we can observe a sudden change of the shearing stresses (which relate to the transport resistance) at corresponding onset temperature of locally amorphous solid 4He considering the role of holes or defects. We found that there might be possible almost very-low flow-resistance transport of locally amorphous solid 4He confined in nanopores at temperature ∼ 0.1 K after intensive calculations.