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Condensed-matter physics

Going with the flow

Nature volume 457, pages 273–274 (2009)Cite this article

Observations of superfluid behaviour — flow without friction — of unusual character in a condensed-matter system pave the way to investigations of superfluidity in systems that are out of thermal equilibrium.

When in 1937 liquid helium was first observed to flow with negligible viscosity through a narrow gap, it was clear that, at low temperatures, helium was different from ordinary fluids. This prompted Pyotr Kapitza to name the phenomenon superfluidity1 by analogy with superconductivity. Since then, experiments on liquid helium and cold atoms have revealed other aspects of superfluidity (Table 1), including quantized vortices, undisturbed flow past an obstacle (for example, a structural defect), and (metastable) persistent flow in a doughnut-shaped geometry.

Table 1
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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jonathan Keeling is in the Department of Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB3 0HE, UK. jmjk2@cam.ac.uk,

    Jonathan Keeling

  2. Natalia G. Berloff is in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, University of Cambridge, Cambridgeshire CB3 0WA, UK. n.g.berloff@damtp.cam.ac.uk,

    Natalia G. Berloff

Authors
  1. Jonathan Keeling
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  2. Natalia G. Berloff
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Keeling, J., Berloff, N. Going with the flow. Nature 457, 273–274 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/457273a

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