Abstract
The recent discovery that 4 He does not wet the surface of cesium makes possible the study of superfluid droplets. We have used a long focal length microscope to study superfluid 4 He droplets on a cesium surface. We find that 4 He droplets do not flow freely over the surfaces we prepare. Rather, they remain stationary even when the surface is inclined by as much as 10° to the horizontal. The contact angle, the angle between the surface and the liquid-vapor interface is also highly hysteretic. At 1.2 K, where the advancing angle is near 25°, the receding angle varies between 0° and 7°, depending on the cesium film.
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Rutledge, J., Ross, D. & Taborek, P. Direct Optical Imaging of Superfluid 4He Droplets on a Cesium Surface. Journal of Low Temperature Physics 113, 811–816 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022538519259
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022538519259