Magnetization studies of the nuclear spin ordered phases of solid 3 He in silver sinters

Solid 3 He, in the bcc lattice between 34 and 100 bar, exhibits two nuclear magnetic ordered phases in the sub-mK temperature range, the so called U2D2 low (magnetic) field phase and the “high field phase” above 0.4 T. To determine the exact spin structure of these phases we started a project of neutron scattering from the ordered solid in collaboration with the Hahn-Meitner Institute, Berlin, and other European and US groups. For this experiment it is crucial to grow a single crystal within the sinter needed for cooling the solid to temperatures of the order of 500 μK (or even twenty times lower in the case of the hcp lattice which is formed above 100 bar) and to keep it there long enough to measure a magnetic neutron reflection. We studied the growth of crystals in Ag sinters of different pore size and with different growth speeds to find an optimal way to obtain single crystalline samples. As a first diagnostic step we performed pulsed NMR measurements in the ordered phases of solid 3 He in a sinter of 2700 Å particle size down to temperatures of 450 μK at various molar volumes. We could keep the samples in the ordered state for as long as 140 h. The second method we used was SQUID magnetometry. For the low field phase T N was indicated by a drop of the intensity, both in the NMR signal and in the dc magnetization, whereas in the high field phase an increase of about 30% was observed below the ordering temperature. For the fabrication of the sinters a packing fraction of 50% and subsequent annealing proved to be very favorable to obtain cold ordered solid. Furthermore, we find that a paramagnetic surface contribution from a few monolayers of 3 He exists down to 500 μK in addition to the bulk magnetization. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2005