2013/03/23 by David R. Nelson, Ariel Amir, Nelson, David R. +1
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1303.5896
Lectures given by D. R. Nelson at the Les Houches School on "Soft Interfaces", July 2-27, 2012
arxiv created 2013/03/23 · arxiv updated 2013/03/26
There is a deep analogy between the physics of crystalline solids and the behavior of superfluids, dating back to pioneering work of Phillip Anderson, Paul Martin and others. The stiffness to shear deformations in a periodic crystal resembles the superfluid density that controls the behavior of supercurrents in neutral superfluids such as He4. Dislocations in solids have a close analogy with quantized vortices in superfluids. Remarkable recent experiments on the way rod-shaped bacteria elongate their cell walls have focused attention on the dynamics and interactions of point-like dislocation defects in partially ordered cylindrical crystalline monolayers. In these lectures, we review the physics of superfluid helium films on cylinders and discuss how confinement in one direction affects vortex interactions with supercurrents. Although there are similarities with the way dislocations respond to strains on cylinders, important differences emerge, due to the vector nature of the topological charges characterizing the dislocations.