Solid helium‐3 is not as simple as we thought

Helium‐3 has revealed yet another quirk in the complex pattern of its behavior at low temperatures. The latest surprise is that the nuclear spins in its magnetically ordered solid phase are not arranged according to the simplest symmetries one would associate with its underlying body‐centered‐cubic lattice. This conclusion comes from two simultaneous but independent nuclear magnetic resonance studies done by Douglas D. Osheroff, Michael C. Cross and Daniel S. Fisher at Bell Telephone Laboratories and by Dwight Adams, Erwin A. Schubert, Greg E. Haas and Donovan M. Bakalyar at the University of Florida (at Gainesville). Interpretation of the Bell Labs data is exceptionally clear because the experimenters there succeeded in growing a single crystal of solid ${\mathrm{He}}^3$ below its transition temperature to a magnetically ordered state. The two studies probe behavior at different regions of the applied magnetic field and thus complement one another.

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