Various Super Fluid Applications

Super fluids helium 3 and helium 4 have been largely responded to in physics and chemistry. Recently, within the scope of chemistry, helium 4 as the super fluid has been put to the test and successfully applied in techniques such as spectroscopic. The use in this particular sphere is in the capacity of a quantum solvent. In this form the super fluid is referred to as SHeDS or Super fluid Helium Droplet Spectroscopy.

What chemists have keenly observed is that when studying molecules of gas, when a single gas molecule is solvated in helium, the medium of the super fluid actually allows the gas molecule to be empowered with its own rotational freedom. Thus observations reveal that the molecule of gas ends up behaving in the same manner as it would during the lab gas phase. Other applications of the super fluid include high precision gadgetry such as those that measure predicted gravitational consequences that are theoretically proved. These include gyroscopes like the Gravity Probe B.

More recently, helium 3 and helium 4 have been used as super fluids to trap light and subsequently lower its speed. In this relevance, it is interesting to note Lene Hau's experiments with the super fluid. They reveal that light that is passed through a condensed form of the gas of sodium charged by the Bose-Einstein effect that makes it analogous to already established state of a super fluid, and slowed to around 61.2 km/h in a vacuum, the reaction does not in any way change the speed of light.

This lowered speed of light thus got emits a refractive index that is very high and this property of a super fluid is not observed in all cases. An excellent example is that of the IRAS or Infrared Astronomical Satellite that was launched in 1983, with the aim of gathering data on infrared. It was cooled by no less than more than 700 liters of helium to maintain the required temperature of -271.4 °C. Today physicists around the world are able to generate Fermionic condensate from fermionic atoms that are ultra cold.

The very cold conditioning enables the fermion pairs to form the required di-atomic molecules and also successfully go through the condensation as per the Bose and Einstein method of condensation. It has also been observed that the fermions, at the other extreme, can form what are called copper pairs. These super conducting electrons also display super fluidity. The use of helium 3 and helium 4 in the world of science has enabled work with super cold atomic gases to help prove the BCS and the BEC crossover.

With the use of the same technology there are claims to the discovery of super solids too. The discovery of 2004 by the Penn University physicists came out of helium 4 being cooled to around 200 mK, and under very high pressure. The result is that a ~1% fraction of solid actually appears to get converted to a super fluid. By this experiment, the physicists attempted quench cooling to increase or decrease density defect, like in the experiments involving a torsion oscillator.