Theoretical Physics Colloquium

Introduction to High Energy Low Temperature Physics

by Prof. Anthony Leggett (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)

Tuesday, January 11, 2011 from to (Asia/Kolkata)
at Colaba Campus ( AG-69 )
Description
When a high-energy particle such as a gamma-ray, neutron or cosmic-ray muon is incident on an ultra-low temperature system such as superfluid 3-He, it may heat a small region of the liquid to temperatures of the order of a thousand times the ambient one. The recovery from this very unusual situation,and its possible consequences for the nucleation of first-order phase transitions, topological singularities etc., provide a fascinating challenge to theory. I discuss some of these problems in the context of the Stanford experiments on nucleation of the 3-He B phase by radiation and the recent neutron experiments on 3-He which are designed to mimic the behavior of the early Universe.
Organised by Dr. Vikram Tripathi