Neutron studies of liquid and solid helium: Progress report, May 1, 1987-April 30, 1988

Liquid and solid helium are prototype simple and solids displaying a wide spectrum of quantum properties. Understanding gained in these simple systems can be readily applied to more complicated materials. Neutron scattering studies carried out at DOE supported national facilities and the associated development of theory and models continue to reveal new physics in these facinating materials. During the past year we have measured the dynamic for factor, S(Q,ω), in superfluid and normal liquid 4He accurately as a function of temperature. This shows that the sharp one-phonon excitation, which exists in the superfluid phase below T/sub lambda/, either disappears at or changes entirely in character at the transition to the normal phase. Thus the sharp one-phonon excitation can be associated with superfluidity (or a condensate). However, we find the weight of scattering in the one-phonon peak, Z(Q,T), is not porportional to the superfluid density, /rho//sub S/(T). We have also measured S(Q,ω) in the range 3 ≤ Q ≤ 15 /angstrom//sup /minus/1/ in order to obtain the width W(Q) and peak position, E(Q), of S(Q,ω) as a function of Q. We have made microscopic calculations of S(Q,ω) in the range 3 ≤ Q ≤ 15 /angstrom//sup /minus/1/ in both liquid 3He and 4He. The aim is a first principles evaluation of W(Q) and E(Q) as a function of Q for comparsion with experiments