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Details of Grant 

EPSRC Reference: EP/C00566X/1
Title: Nonlinear entropy waves in an impure superfluid
Principal Investigator: McClintock, Professor P
Other Investigators:
Researcher Co-Investigators:
Dr PC Hendry Dr D Luchinsky
Project Partners:
Department: Physics
Organisation: Lancaster University
Scheme: Standard Research (Pre-FEC)
Starts: 01 September 2005 Ends: 28 February 2009 Value (£): 365,838
EPSRC Research Topic Classifications:
Quantum Fluids & Solids
EPSRC Industrial Sector Classifications:
No relevance to Underpinning Sectors
Related Grants:
Panel History:  
Summary on Grant Application Form
Wave motion is all around us, and arises in many different media, e.g. as sound, radio, light and de Broglie matter waves, and in puddles, rivers, the atmosphere and blood flow. For media that are linear, e.g. the vacuum, wave phenomena can be understood very simply. For media that behave nonlinearly - which is almost always the case in practice except for waves of very small amplitude - the waves are far more complicated and display many complex features that have yet to be elucidated, e.g. transformation between different frequencies and different kinds of waves, and the monster freak waves that sometimes rise up and overwhelm ships.The proposal is to use superfluid He-4 as a model system in which to investigate and seek to understand such phenomena. The superfluid exists below 2K (i.e. 2 degrees above the absolute zero of temperature). It is an ideal temperature range in which to conduct sensitive measurements because the lack of thermal expansion gives perfect mechanical stability, and the thermally generated electrical noise that plagues experiments at room temperature (300K) is negligibly small.Superfluid He-4 itself is especially well-suited to such a study because e.g. it supports two distinctively different kinds of waves - temperature waves as well as ordinary sound waves - enabling wave transformation processes to be studied directly. It is also possible to introduce both frictional effects and random noise, both of which are known to affect nonlinear wave motion, in a controlled way.Lancaster has an international reputation for research on both superfluidity and nonlinear dynamics, and is thus ideally (perhaps uniquely) well suited as the home for what is an important, fundamental, investigation whose results will in priciple be very widely applicable.
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Organisation Website: http://www.lancs.ac.uk