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Quartz tuning fork as a probe of helium surfaces

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dc.date.accessioned 2017-05-29T06:44:13Z und
dc.date.accessioned 2017-10-24T12:04:22Z
dc.date.available 2017-05-29T06:44:13Z und
dc.date.available 2017-10-24T12:04:22Z
dc.date.issued 2017-05-29T06:44:13Z
dc.identifier.uri http://radr.hulib.helsinki.fi/handle/10138.1/6040 und
dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10138.1/6040
dc.title Quartz tuning fork as a probe of helium surfaces en
ethesis.discipline Physics en
ethesis.discipline Fysiikka fi
ethesis.discipline Fysik sv
ethesis.discipline.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/3434818f-62d6-4ad2-9c9b-7a86be9cf8e6
ethesis.department.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/3acb09b1-e6a2-4faa-b677-1a1b03285b66
ethesis.department Institutionen för fysik sv
ethesis.department Department of Physics en
ethesis.department Fysiikan laitos fi
ethesis.faculty Matematisk-naturvetenskapliga fakulteten sv
ethesis.faculty Matemaattis-luonnontieteellinen tiedekunta fi
ethesis.faculty Faculty of Science en
ethesis.faculty.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/8d59209f-6614-4edd-9744-1ebdaf1d13ca
ethesis.university.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/50ae46d8-7ba9-4821-877c-c994c78b0d97
ethesis.university Helsingfors universitet sv
ethesis.university University of Helsinki en
ethesis.university Helsingin yliopisto fi
dct.creator Haataja, Miika-Matias
dct.issued 2017
dct.language.ISO639-2 eng
dct.abstract Interfaces of solid and liquid helium exhibit many physical phenomena. At very low temperatures the solid-liquid interface becomes mobile enough to allow a periodic melting-freezing wave to pro-pagate along the surface. These crystallization waves were experimentally confirmed in ^4He decades ago, but in ^3He they are only observable at extremely low temperatures (well below 0.5 mK). This presents a difficult technical challenge to create a measurement scheme with very low dissipation. We have developed a method to use a quartz tuning fork to probe oscillating helium surfaces. These mechanical oscillators are highly sensitive to interactions with the surrounding medium, which makes them extremely accurate sensors of many material properties. By tracking the fork's resonant frequency with two lock-in amplifiers, we have been able to attain a frequency resolution below 1 mHz. The shift in resonant frequency can then be used to calculate the corresponding change in surface level, if the interaction between the fork and the helium surface is understood. One of the main goals of this thesis was to create interaction models that could provide quantitative estimates for the calculations. Experimental results suggest that the liquid-vapour surface forms a column of superfluid that is suspended from the tip of the fork. Due to the extreme wetting properties of superfluids, the fork is also coated with a thin (∼ 300 Å) layer of helium. The added mass from this layer depends on the fork-surface distance. Oscillations of the surface level thus cause periodic change in the effective mass of the fork, which in turn modulates the resonant frequency. For the solid-liquid interface the interaction is based on the inviscid flow of superfluid around the moving fork. The added hydrodynamic mass increases when the fork oscillates closer to the solid surface. Crystallization waves below the fork will thus change the fork's resonant frequency. We were able to excite gravity-capillary and crystallization waves in ^4He with a bifilarly wound capacitor. Using the quartz tuning fork detection scheme we measured the spectrum of both types of waves at 10 mK. According to the interaction models developed in this thesis, the surface level resolution of this method was ∼ 10 μm for the gravity-capillary waves and ∼ 1 nm for the crystallization waves. Thanks to the low dissipation (∼ 20 pW) of the measurement scheme, our method is directly applicable in future ^3He experiments. en
dct.language en
ethesis.language.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/languages/eng
ethesis.language English en
ethesis.language englanti fi
ethesis.language engelska sv
ethesis.thesistype pro gradu-avhandlingar sv
ethesis.thesistype pro gradu -tutkielmat fi
ethesis.thesistype master's thesis en
ethesis.thesistype.URI http://data.hulib.helsinki.fi/id/thesistypes/mastersthesis
dct.identifier.urn URN:NBN:fi-fe2017112251817
dc.type.dcmitype Text

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