Superheat Limit of⁴He and Its Quantum Deviation from Classical Behavior

Abstract

The superheating of normal liquid 4 He was investigated by means of continuous heating of liquid specimen in a small glass capillary over a temperature range 2.26 K to 4.88 K. The maximum superheating data obtained were compared with the prediction from the homogeneous nucleation theory and the data for various liquids in terms of the reduced coordinates. It is confirmed that the agreement between the homogeneous nucleation theory and experiment on 4 He is satisfactory, and the scaled superheating depends parametrically on the quantum parameter \(\varLambda^{*}\), i.e., the deviations of the data for quantum liquids from the classical behavior become pronounced as the parameter is increased.