Heat capacity of quantum adsorbates: Hydrogen and helium on evaporated gold films

The author has constructed an apparatus to make specific heat measurements of quantum gases adsorbed on metallic films at temperatures between 0.3 and 4 K. He has used this apparatus to study quench-condensed hydrogen films between 4 and 923 layers thick with J = 1 concentrations between 0.28 and 0.75 deposited on an evaporated gold surface. He has observed that the orientational ordering of the J = 1 molecules depends on the substrate temperature during deposition of the hydrogen film. He has inferred that the density of the films condensed at the lowest temperatures is 25% higher than in bulk H2 crystals and have observed that the structure of those films is affected by annealing at 3.4 K. The author has measured the J = 1 to J = 0 conversion rate to be comparable to that of the bulk for thick films; however, he found evidence that the gold surface catalyzes conversion in the first two to four layers. He has also used this apparatus to study films of 4He less than one layer thick adsorbed on an evaporated gold surface. He shows that the phase diagram of the system is similar to that for 4He/graphite although not as rich in structure, and the phase boundaries occur at different coverages and temperatures. At coverages below about half a layer and at sufficiently high temperatures, the 4He behaves like a two-dimensional noninteracting Bose gas. At lower temperatures and higher coverages, liquidlike and solidlike behavior is observed. The Appendix shows measurements of the far-infrared absorptivity of the high-Tc superconductor La1.87Sr0.13CuO4