Ultra-High Q Acoustic Resonance in Superfluid $$^4$$He

We report the measurement of the acoustic quality factor of a gram-scale, kilohertz-frequency superfluid resonator, detected through the parametric coupling to a superconducting niobium microwave cavity. For temperatures between 400 mK and 50 mK, we observe a T - 4 temperature dependence of the qual...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of low temperature physics Vol. 186; no. 3-4; pp. 233 - 240
Main Authors De Lorenzo, L. A., Schwab, K. C.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer Nature B.V 01.02.2017
Subjects
Acoustic resonance
Cavity resonators
Dissipation factor
Fluids
Gravitational waves
Helium isotopes
Niobium
Pulsars
Q factors
Superfluidity
Temperature dependence
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Summary:We report the measurement of the acoustic quality factor of a gram-scale, kilohertz-frequency superfluid resonator, detected through the parametric coupling to a superconducting niobium microwave cavity. For temperatures between 400 mK and 50 mK, we observe a T - 4 temperature dependence of the quality factor, consistent with a 3-phonon dissipation mechanism. We observe Q factors up to 1.4 × 10 8 , consistent with the dissipation due to dilute 3 He impurities, and expect that significant further improvements are possible. These experiments are relevant to exploring quantum behavior and decoherence of massive macroscopic objects, the laboratory detection of continuous gravitational waves from pulsars, and the probing of possible limits to physical length scales.
ISSN:0022-2291
1573-7357
DOI:10.1007/s10909-016-1674-x