Superfluids
Superconductors
After the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics went to a group of scientists for discovering superfluidity in Helium3, numerous superfluid experiments were started around the globe. Before then, experiments were few and far between, because there wasn't much more that scientists could learn from Helium4. Helium3 opened up a whole new perspective on superfluidity. In 1995, a group of physicists from the University of Colorado, Boulder created the first proper Bose-Einstein condensate from rubidium vapor. They got the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work, physicists elswhere are working towards condensing other alkali metal vapors to demonstrate Bose-Einstein statistics. Below are several superfluid and Bose-Einstein experiments which are currently underway or have been recently completed.
Critical currents, the maximum amount of current which can flow in a superconductor for it to keep its property of 0 resistance, are being studied by Flavio Pardo, Francisco De La Cruz, Peter L. Gammel, Ernst Bucher & David J. Bishop. The background of this webpage is actually a computerized image from their research of current vortices in a superconductor near critical current.
Dr. Horst Meyer of Duke University is collaborating with several other physicists from California in sevaral superfluid experiments, including research in mixtures of He3 and He4, heat transport in He4, equilibrium dynamics near the critical point, and several others.
Rena Zieve of UC Davis is studying turbulence in superfluid helium.
A group from UC Berkeley is studying quantum interference in superfluid helium, as used in the SQUID device.
Russian scientists at the Max Planck Institute of Flow Research have proven that superfluid hydrogen could exists, but only under very special conditions. More research is underway.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is conducting several experiments including:
Dr. Talso C. Chui - Heat Current, Q, Effects on the Superfluid Transition (QUEST)
Dr. Inseob Hahn - Measurement of the Coexistence Curve in 3He near the Liquid-Gas Critical Point in Microgravity
Dr. Melora E. Larson - Experiments Along Coexistence near Tricriticality (EXACT)
Dr. Yuanming Liu - Effects of Heat Current on the Superfluid Transition in a Low- Gravity Simulator
Dr. Fang Zhong - Measurements of the Thermal Conductivity near the Liquid-Vapor Critical Point of Helium-3 and Helium-4