Rollin film
Encyclopedia
Nanometre
A nanometre is a unit of length in the metric system, equal to one billionth of a metre. The name combines the SI prefix nano- with the parent unit name metre .The nanometre is often used to express dimensions on the atomic scale: the diameter...
-thick liquid film of helium
Helium
Helium is the chemical element with atomic number 2 and an atomic weight of 4.002602, which is represented by the symbol He. It is a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas that heads the noble gas group in the periodic table...
in the helium II state. It exhibits a "creeping" effect in response to surfaces extending past the film's level (wave propagation
Wave propagation
Wave propagation is any of the ways in which waves travel.With respect to the direction of the oscillation relative to the propagation direction, we can distinguish between longitudinal wave and transverse waves....
). Helium II can escape from any non-closed surface via creeping toward and eventually evaporating from capillaries of 10−7 to 10−8 meters or greater.
Rollin films are involved in the fountain effect where superfluid
Superfluid
Superfluidity is a state of matter in which the matter behaves like a fluid without viscosity and with extremely high thermal conductivity. The substance, which appears to be a normal liquid, will flow without friction past any surface, which allows it to continue to circulate over obstructions and...
helium leaks out of a container in a fountain-like manner. They have high thermal conductivity.
The ability of superfluid liquids to cross obstacles that lie at a higher level is often referred to as the Onnes-Effect, named after Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes
Heike Kamerlingh Onnes was a Dutch physicist and Nobel laureate. He pioneered refrigeration techniques, and he explored how materials behaved when cooled to nearly absolute zero. He was the first to liquify helium...
. The Onnes-Effect is enabled by the capillary forces dominating the gravity- and viscous forces.
Waves propagating across a Rollin film are governed by the same equation as gravity waves in shallow water, but rather than gravity, the restoring force is the Van der Waals force
Van der Waals force
In physical chemistry, the van der Waals force , named after Dutch scientist Johannes Diderik van der Waals, is the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between molecules other than those due to covalent bonds or to the electrostatic interaction of ions with one another or with neutral...
. These waves are known as third sound.