Dr. James Sauls
Northwestern University
The light isotope of Helium is the purest phase of matter in nature. Zero-point fluctuations drive any impurity out of the bulk liquid.However, studies of quantum fluids embedded in media with complex structure have been carried out by impregnating Helium into low-density porous glass. Silica aerogel is solid formed from a network of strands and clusters of SiO2 that is almost entirely empty space.This gossamer structure is a realization of a random fractal - a structure with no long-range order, but power-law scaling of the density correlation function over approximately three decades of spatial scales.I illustrate these properties with simulations of the growth of silica aerogels and describe some of the ideas that make these complex structures of interest for investigating the effects of disorder, spatial confinement and correlations on the ordered phases of a liquid 3He.
Friday, January 8 at 11:00 AM
Room L211, Technological Institute