In 1966, William Russell Abel, Ansel Cochran Anderson and John Charles Wheatley sent acoustic waves through bulk liquid helium-3 at and frequencies and . A quartz delay line and receiving acoustic transducer bounded a liquid gap; shielding reduced electrical pickup. Powdered cerium magnesium nitrate provided magnetic thermometry during a slow warm-up. Pulse amplitudes measured acoustic attenuation; phase difference comparison measured velocity. Calibration pulses checked gain; early received cycles avoided multiple reflections. On cooling through a maximum, acoustic attenuation changed from to with a velocity shift supporting zero sound; is their magnetic temperature scale. Weak acoustic attenuation was harder to resolve.[ref]
This 1966 test followed Lev Landau's 1962 Nobel Prize in Physics.[ref]
The experiment concerned normal liquid helium-3, distinct from the later discovery of superfluid helium-3.[ref] Landau's original papers are theoretical calculations, not reports of an apparatus.
Ansel Cochran Anderson Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
An experimental condensed matter physicist who coauthored an observation of zero sound in helium-3. The experiment probed a collective density wave in a regime where quasiparticle collisions are slow compared with the oscillation. This distinguishes collisionless quantum-fluid dynamics from ordinary hydrodynamic sound.[ref]
John Charles Wheatley Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
An experimental physicist who coauthored measurements of zero sound in liquid helium-3. At sufficiently low temperature, collisions become too infrequent to maintain ordinary local equilibrium during an acoustic cycle. The resulting collective response tests the theory of a Fermi liquid through propagation of a density disturbance.[ref]
William Russell Abel Created 2026-10-18 Updated 2026-11-05
An experimental physicist who coauthored the 1966 zero sound propagation experiment with Ansel Cochran Anderson and John Charles Wheatley. Sound measurements in very cold helium-3 tested whether collective density motion survives in the collisionless regime predicted for a Fermi liquid.[ref]