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Quantum fluid

A quantum fluid is a state of matter in which quantum mechanical phenomena, such as Bose-Einstein condensation, dominate the macroscopic behavior of the system, leading to unique properties like frictionless flow and quantized excitations.^[1] These fluids typically arise in bosonic systems at ultralow temperatures, where a significant fraction of particles occupy the same quantum state, enabling collective quantum coherence over large scales.^[2] The most prominent examples include superfluid helium-4 (^4He) below its lambda transition temperature of 2.17 K and Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of dilute atomic gases cooled to nanokelvin temperatures.^[3] Unlike classical fluids, quantum fluids exhibit irrotational flow except at discrete singularities and display critical velocities beyond which superfluidity dissipates.^[1] Superfluidity, a hallmark of quantum fluids, manifests as zero viscosity, allowing the fluid to flow without energy dissipation through narrow channels or along surfaces, as observed in the Rollin film effect in ^4He.^[3] This property stems from the macroscopic wave function describing the fluid, governed by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for BECs or the two-fluid model for helium superfluids, where a superfluid component coexists with a normal viscous component at finite temperatures.^[1] Quantized vortices, with circulation multiples of h/m where h is Planck's constant and m is the mass of the bosonic constituent (helium-4 atom or helium-3 Cooper pair), form the elementary excitations, enabling phenomena like vortex tangles in quantum turbulence.^[4] In fermionic systems like superfluid ^3He, pairing into bosonic Cooper pairs at around 2.7 mK produces analogous behavior, though with p-wave symmetry.^[3] The study of quantum fluids originated with the discovery of superfluidity in ^4He in 1938 by Pyotr Kapitza, John F. Allen, and Donald Misener, building on earlier predictions of Bose-Einstein condensation by Satyendra Nath Bose and Albert Einstein in 1924-1925.^[1] Experimental realization of BECs in 1995 using alkali atoms like rubidium-87 marked a milestone, providing tunable systems for probing quantum hydrodynamics in controlled environments.^[2] Quantum fluids also extend to exotic realms, such as the superfluid cores of neutron stars and high-temperature superconductors where electron pairs behave fluid-like.^[1] These systems continue to inform fundamental physics, from understanding symmetry breaking to applications in precision sensing and quantum simulation. As of 2025, research continues to explore quantum fluids of light and novel phases for quantum technologies.^[5]

Fundamentals

Definition

A quantum fluid is a system in which quantum mechanical effects, including wave-particle duality and adherence to Bose or Fermi statistics, manifest on a macroscopic scale within fluid-like states of matter.^[6] These systems arise at sufficiently low temperatures where quantum coherence dominates, leading to collective behaviors not observed in classical regimes. In contrast to classical fluids, which follow Boltzmann statistics and exhibit viscosity due to particle collisions, quantum fluids display anomalous properties such as zero viscosity (superfluidity) or perfect diamagnetism, emerging when the thermal de Broglie wavelength becomes comparable to the average interparticle spacing.^[7]^[6] Superfluidity represents a hallmark property of many such fluids, enabling frictionless flow. Prominent examples include liquid helium-4 below the λ-point at 2.17 K, where it transitions to a superfluid state; electron fluids in superconductors exhibiting zero electrical resistance; and ultracold atomic gases forming Bose-Einstein condensates.^[8]^[9]^[10] The role of quantum statistics is central: bosonic quantum fluids, composed of integer-spin particles, can undergo Bose-Einstein condensation into a single ground state, fostering macroscopic coherence; fermionic quantum fluids, made of half-integer-spin particles, achieve analogous ordered states through Cooper pairing mechanisms.^[6]^[7]

Quantum Mechanical Basis

Quantum fluids exhibit macroscopic quantum behavior when the wave-like nature of their constituent particles becomes prominent on scales comparable to the interparticle spacing. This arises from wave-particle duality, where the thermal de Broglie wavelength, \lambda_{dB} = h / \sqrt{2\pi m k_B T}, of the particles reaches or exceeds the average interparticle distance d. In such conditions, the wave functions of neighboring particles overlap significantly, allowing quantum interference effects to influence the collective dynamics of the fluid rather than being confined to individual particles.^[11]^[12] The quantum statistics obeyed by the particles play a crucial role in enabling these effects. For bosonic particles, such as helium-4 atoms, Bose-Einstein statistics permit multiple particles to occupy the same quantum state, leading to Bose-Einstein condensation where a macroscopic fraction of particles resides in the ground state at low temperatures. This condensation underpins superfluidity in bosonic quantum fluids. In contrast, fermionic systems, like electrons in superconductors or helium-3 atoms, follow Fermi-Dirac statistics and the Pauli exclusion principle, preventing single-particle ground-state occupation. However, attractive interactions can induce pairing of fermions into composite bosons, known as Cooper pairs, which then undergo condensation, resulting in macroscopic quantum coherence.^[12]^[13] This statistical behavior facilitates macroscopic coherence, where the entire fluid can be described by a single, coherent quantum wave function with a well-defined phase. The phase locking across the system allows the fluid to exhibit interference phenomena on macroscopic scales, as the collective wave function behaves like a single quantum entity rather than a collection of independent particles. Fritz London first proposed this macroscopic wave function description for superfluids, emphasizing how quantum phase coherence extends to the bulk scale.^[14]^[12] In systems like liquid helium, weak interparticle interactions are essential for quantum effects to dominate over thermal fluctuations. The van der Waals forces between helium atoms are sufficiently feeble, combined with the light atomic mass, to sustain large zero-point motion that prevents solidification even at absolute zero and allows quantum delocalization to prevail. This weak coupling minimizes scattering and preserves the coherence necessary for quantum fluid properties.^[15]

Historical Development

Theoretical Foundations

The theoretical foundations of quantum fluids emerged in the 1920s with the development of quantum statistics, which provided the framework for understanding collective quantum behaviors in many-body systems at low temperatures. In 1924, Satyendra Nath Bose derived the Planck distribution for photons using a novel counting method for indistinguishable particles, laying the groundwork for statistics applicable to bosons.^[16] Albert Einstein extended this approach in 1925 to a monatomic ideal gas, predicting Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC), a phase transition where a macroscopic number of bosons occupy the lowest quantum state below a critical temperature, potentially manifesting in quantum fluids like dilute gases or liquids. This work highlighted how quantum degeneracy could lead to coherent, macroscopic quantum phenomena in bosonic systems. Complementing Bose-Einstein statistics, Fermi-Dirac statistics were formulated in 1926 to describe fermions, particles obeying the Pauli exclusion principle, such as electrons and helium-3 nuclei. Enrico Fermi developed the statistical distribution for identical fermions, ensuring no two occupy the same quantum state, which applies to fermionic quantum fluids where degeneracy pressure arises at low temperatures. Independently, Paul Dirac arrived at the same formulation, emphasizing its role in quantum mechanics for systems like liquid helium-3, where fermionic pairing could enable superfluidity analogous to bosonic condensation. These 1920s advancements in quantum statistics established the particle-specific behaviors essential for predicting quantum fluid states. By the 1930s, theorists began applying these statistical foundations to real liquids, particularly helium, to explain anomalous low-temperature properties. Fritz London proposed in 1938 a two-fluid model for superfluid helium-II, positing that below the lambda transition temperature, the liquid separates into an inviscid superfluid component (arising from Bose-Einstein degeneracy) and a viscous normal fluid component (behaving like a classical gas of excitations). This model qualitatively predicted phenomena like zero viscosity and persistent flow, framing superfluid helium as a quantum fluid where quantum coherence dominates macroscopic hydrodynamics. Extending these ideas to electronic systems, the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory of 1957 described superconductivity as a quantum fluid state in metals, where electrons form Cooper pairs (bosonic pairs of fermions) mediated by phonon interactions, leading to a condensate with zero electrical resistance below a critical temperature.^[13] This microscopic theory unified superconductivity with quantum fluid concepts, demonstrating how attractive interactions could overcome fermionic repulsion to produce macroscopic quantum coherence.

Key Discoveries

The discovery of superconductivity marked the first experimental observation of a quantum fluid phenomenon, occurring in 1911 when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his team at Leiden University measured the electrical resistance of mercury cooled to 4.2 K using liquid helium, finding it abruptly dropped to zero.^[17] This transition, unexpected at the time, laid the groundwork for understanding macroscopic quantum effects in solids.^[18] In 1937, superfluidity was independently discovered in liquid helium-4 by Pyotr Kapitsa in Moscow and by John F. Allen and Don Misener in Cambridge, who observed a phase transition at approximately 2.17 K—the lambda point—below which the fluid exhibited zero viscosity and flowed without resistance through narrow channels.^[19] Kapitsa's work, conducted at the Mond Laboratory, highlighted the anomalous thermal properties, earning him the 1978 Nobel Prize in Physics for achievements in low-temperature physics. The superfluid phase of helium-3, a fermionic quantum fluid, was identified in 1972 by Douglas Osheroff, David M. Lee, and Robert C. Richardson at Cornell University through pulsed nuclear magnetic resonance experiments on pure liquid helium-3, revealing phase transitions at around 2.6 mK into superfluid states with paired fermions.^[20] This breakthrough, which demonstrated superfluidity in a system of fermions requiring Cooper pairing analogous to superconductivity, earned the trio the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physics.^[21] In 1995, the first Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) was achieved as a quantum fluid by Eric Cornell and Carl Wieman at JILA, using evaporative cooling to condense approximately 2,000 rubidium-87 atoms into their ground state at 170 nK, confirming the theoretical prediction of macroscopic occupation of a single quantum state.^[22] This milestone, shared with Wolfgang Ketterle's independent work, was recognized with the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics. During the 2000s, experimental progress in ultracold atomic gases led to the realization of unitary Fermi gases exhibiting superfluidity, with key evidence of pairing and the BCS-BEC crossover observed in 2003–2004 by teams including Deborah Jin's group using potassium-40 atoms tuned to infinite scattering length via Feshbach resonance, enabling studies of strongly interacting fermionic matter.

Types

Superfluid Helium

Superfluid helium represents the archetypal quantum fluid, where liquid helium isotopes exhibit macroscopic quantum phenomena at cryogenic temperatures. Liquid helium-4 (^4He), composed of bosonic atoms with total spin zero, undergoes a second-order phase transition known as the lambda transition at 2.17 K under saturated vapor pressure, marking the onset of superfluidity in the helium II phase. This transition was first indicated by anomalies in the specific heat observed in the late 1920s, with the precise temperature value refined through subsequent thermodynamic measurements.^[23] Below this temperature, ^4He demonstrates zero shear viscosity, enabling frictionless flow through narrow capillaries, as independently demonstrated by experiments measuring flow rates far exceeding classical limits. Additionally, superfluid ^4He exhibits extraordinarily high thermal conductivity, on the order of 10^5 times that of typical liquids, due to the ballistic propagation of excitations in the absence of viscous scattering. In contrast, liquid helium-3 (^3He), an isotopic fermionic system with half-integer spin 1/2, does not Bose-condense directly but achieves superfluidity through the pairing of atoms into composite bosonic entities, analogous to Cooper pairs in superconductivity. This pairing occurs at much lower temperatures, around 1 mK at zero pressure, with the transition temperature increasing to a maximum of about 2.5 mK at intermediate pressures, requiring advanced cooling techniques to access. The superfluid phases of ^3He include the A-phase, characterized by anisotropic p-wave pairing with equal-spin pairing and broken spin-rotation symmetry, stable in magnetic fields, and the B-phase, featuring isotropic pairing with higher transition temperature under zero field and fully gapped excitations. These phases were discovered in 1972 through specific heat anomalies and NMR measurements in Pomeranchuk-cooled samples, revealing distinct symmetries that lead to different superfluid properties, such as anisotropic mass transport in the A-phase versus isotropic behavior in the B-phase.^[24] The isotopic differences stem from quantum statistics: ^4He atoms, being indistinguishable bosons, readily form a coherent macroscopic wavefunction via Bose-Einstein condensation at the lambda point, facilitating superfluidity without pairing. Conversely, ^3He's fermionic nature enforces the Pauli exclusion principle, suppressing direct condensation and necessitating attractive interactions for pairing at millikelvin scales, resulting in a transition temperature orders of magnitude lower than for ^4He. Experimental investigations of ^4He superfluidity often involve setups exploiting its unique behaviors, such as the fountain effect—where heat applied to one side of a capillary-connected reservoir causes a jet of helium to fountain upward due to a chemical potential gradient—and Rollin films, ultra-thin (∼100 nm) superfluid layers that creep along surfaces without resistance, enabling transfer between vessels. For ^3He, studies rely on dilution refrigerators, which achieve millikelvin temperatures by leveraging the phase separation and entropy-driven dilution of ^3He in superfluid ^4He, providing continuous cooling essential for probing its delicate superfluid phases.

Superconductors

Superconductors exhibit quantum fluid behavior through the formation of Cooper pairs, where electrons pair up via phonon-mediated attraction to create bosonic quasiparticles that condense into a macroscopic quantum state, enabling zero electrical resistance and perfect diamagnetism below a critical temperature. This pairing mechanism, described by Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory, transforms the electron gas into a coherent quantum fluid analogous to superfluids, with the pairs occupying the same ground state across the material.^[13] Superconductivity was first observed in mercury in 1911, marking the initial experimental evidence of this quantum phenomenon.^[25] Superconductors are classified into Type I and Type II based on their response to magnetic fields. Type I superconductors, such as pure metals like lead and tin, completely expel magnetic fields via the Meissner effect up to a critical field strength, maintaining perfect diamagnetism in their quantum fluid state.^[25] In contrast, Type II superconductors, including alloys like niobium-titanium, allow partial penetration of magnetic flux in the form of quantized vortices once the lower critical field is exceeded, enabling higher field tolerance while preserving superconductivity up to an upper critical field; this vortex lattice arises from the Abrikosov theory and is crucial for practical applications.^[25] The critical temperature T_c, below which the quantum fluid phase emerges, varies widely: conventional low-temperature superconductors like niobium achieve T_c \approx 9.2 K, requiring liquid helium cooling. High-temperature cuprate superconductors, discovered in the late 1980s and advanced in the 1990s, reach T_c up to 133 K in compounds like \mathrm{HgBa_2Ca_2Cu_3O_{8+\delta}}, allowing operation with liquid nitrogen and revolutionizing potential applications despite ongoing debates on their pairing mechanism beyond BCS. A key manifestation of the superconducting quantum fluid is the Josephson effect, predicted in 1962, where a supercurrent tunnels coherently through a thin insulating barrier between two superconductors without applied voltage, driven by the phase difference of the macroscopic wavefunction.^[26] This effect enables devices like superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs), which exploit interference of supercurrents for ultrasensitive magnetic field detection down to femtotesla levels.^[25]

Bose-Einstein Condensates

Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in ultracold dilute gases represent a class of quantum fluids where bosonic atoms, such as ^{87}Rb and ^{23}Na, are cooled to temperatures on the order of nanokelvins, enabling the macroscopic occupation of the system's ground state. This phase transition, theoretically predicted by Einstein in 1924–1925 based on Bose's statistical mechanics for photons, occurs when a significant fraction of atoms collapse into a single quantum state, forming a coherent matter wave that behaves as a single giant atom.^[27] The formation process begins with laser cooling to reduce the atomic velocity distribution, followed by evaporative cooling in a magnetic trap, where hotter atoms are selectively removed, allowing the remaining gas to thermalize at progressively lower temperatures until degeneracy sets in.^[22] In these condensates, up to 10^6 or more atoms can occupy the ground state, resulting in a macroscopic quantum wavefunction that exhibits phase coherence across the entire ensemble, analogous to superfluidity in liquid helium but realized in a dilute gaseous medium.^[28] This coherence manifests in phenomena such as interference patterns when two condensates are released and overlapped, confirming the wave-like nature of the condensate. The dilute nature of these gases, with densities around 10^{13}–10^{15} cm^{-3}, minimizes interactions compared to liquid systems, allowing precise control over the quantum behavior. A key feature of gaseous BECs is their tunable interactions, achieved through magnetic Feshbach resonances, which adjust the atomic scattering length by coupling open-channel collisions to bound molecular states near a magnetic-field-tuned crossing.^[29] By varying the scattering length from positive (repulsive) to negative (attractive) values, researchers can drive phase transitions, such as from a superfluid to a Mott insulator state in optical lattices, where atoms localize due to strong repulsion.^[29] This tunability has enabled studies of quantum many-body physics, including the exploration of unitary gases and novel quantum phases. Extensions of the bosonic BEC paradigm include fermionic condensates formed via pairing of fermionic atoms, such as ^6Li, into bosonic molecules that then condense at ultralow temperatures near a Feshbach resonance, bridging the BCS superfluid regime to BEC behavior.^[30] Additionally, spinor condensates incorporate internal spin degrees of freedom, allowing multiple hyperfine components (e.g., F=1 in ^{87}Rb) to coexist and evolve coherently, revealing spin textures, domain formation, and magnetic phase transitions driven by spin-exchange interactions.^[31] These systems provide a versatile platform for simulating complex quantum Hamiltonians with internal structure.

Properties

Superfluidity

Superfluidity manifests as the remarkable ability of quantum fluids to exhibit zero viscosity, enabling frictionless flow without energy dissipation when velocities remain below a critical threshold. This property was first demonstrated through experiments involving the flow of liquid helium II through narrow capillaries, where no pressure gradient was required to maintain the flow, contrasting sharply with classical viscous fluids and indicating an absence of internal friction in the superfluid component. In Poiseuille flow setups, the superfluid displays anomalous behavior: the flow rate exceeds predictions from classical hydrodynamics, as the superfluid portion moves without viscous drag, while any dissipation arises solely from interactions with the container walls or excitations above the critical velocity. The theoretical framework for this frictionless flow is provided by the two-fluid model, proposed by Lev Landau, which describes the quantum fluid as a superposition of two interpenetrating components: a normal fluid that carries all entropy and behaves viscously, and a superfluid component with zero viscosity and zero entropy that flows ideally without dissipation.^[32] In this model, the normal fluid fraction increases with temperature, accounting for the gradual loss of superfluidity as the system approaches the transition temperature, while the superfluid fraction dominates at lower temperatures, enabling the observed dissipationless motion. This separation explains why superfluidity persists even as thermal excitations are present, with the superfluid component decoupled from dissipative processes.^[32] The regime of zero viscosity is limited by a critical velocity, beyond which the superflow destabilizes and energy dissipation occurs through the nucleation of quantized vortices. A rough approximation for this critical velocity in channel flows is v_c \approx \frac{h}{m d}, where h is Planck's constant, m is the mass of the constituent particles, and d is the characteristic dimension of the flow channel (such as its diameter); more precise models involve logarithmic or power-law dependencies on d. For superfluid helium-4, this threshold is observed in channel flows and influences practical limits in low-temperature experiments. A key thermal consequence of superfluidity is the effectively infinite thermal conductivity arising from the two-fluid dynamics, where heat is transported via counterflow of the normal and superfluid components without generating temperature gradients or dissipative losses in the bulk.^[32] This high conductivity enables exceptional heat transfer efficiency but, at elevated heat fluxes, can lead to film boiling, where a stable vapor layer forms at the heated surface, temporarily insulating it and altering the heat transfer regime.^[33] Such behavior underscores the unique interplay between frictionless flow and thermal transport in quantum fluids.

Quantized Phenomena

In quantum fluids, quantized vortices represent a fundamental discrete phenomenon arising from the wave-like nature of the superfluid order parameter. The circulation of the superfluid velocity \mathbf{v}_s around any closed path enclosing a vortex core is quantized, given by \oint \mathbf{v}_s \cdot d\mathbf{l} = n \kappa, where n is an integer, \kappa = h/m is the quantum of circulation, h is Planck's constant, and m is the mass of the bosonic constituent particles (e.g., ^4He atoms in superfluid helium). This quantization stems from the single-valuedness of the macroscopic wavefunction, ensuring the phase changes by $2\pi n around the loop. The concept was first proposed by Lars Onsager in 1949 and elaborated by Richard Feynman in 1955, who described vortices as stable topological defects in the superfluid.^[34] Feynman's seminal argument posits that quantized vortices manifest as nodes where the wavefunction amplitude vanishes, analogous to zeros in a complex scalar field, with stability arising from energy minimization in the presence of rotation or flow. In rotating superfluids, such as ^4He below the lambda point, these vortices arrange into regular lattices to accommodate the imposed angular velocity, effectively simulating rigid-body rotation while preserving the irrotational nature of the superfluid elsewhere; the vortex density scales linearly with rotation speed, as n_v = 2\Omega / \kappa, where \Omega is the angular velocity.^[35] Experimental visualizations, including neutron scattering and ion trapping, confirm these lattice structures with inter-vortex spacings on the order of micrometers under typical rotation rates.^[36] Another quantized effect occurs during phase slippage in confined geometries, such as narrow channels or orifices, where sustained superflow exceeds a critical velocity, leading to discrete dissipation events. Here, the superfluid phase slips by integer multiples of $2\pi, corresponding to the nucleation and passage of vortices across the channel, quantizing the flow rate in units related to \kappa; each slip event releases a fixed energy quantum, observable as reproducible voltage pulses in flow measurements.^[37] This phenomenon, studied in submicron apertures in ^4He, highlights the discrete nature of momentum transfer in one-dimensional-like superfluid transport.^[38] Quantized vortices are also observed in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) of dilute atomic gases, where they form singly or in lattices under rotation, providing a highly controllable platform for studying quantum turbulence and vortex dynamics.^[39] Analogous quantized structures appear in other quantum fluids, notably type-II superconductors, where Abrikosov vortices form in the mixed state under applied magnetic fields. Each vortex carries a quantized magnetic flux \Phi_0 = h/(2e), with e the elementary charge, threading the core as a normal region surrounded by supercurrents; these arrange into triangular lattices, mirroring superfluid vortex arrays but coupled to electromagnetic fields. This flux quantization, predicted by Abrikosov in 1957, underpins the partial penetration of magnetic fields in materials like niobium alloys.^[40]

Theoretical Derivation

De Broglie Wavelength Criterion

The de Broglie wavelength \lambda of a particle is given by the relation \lambda = h / p, where h is Planck's constant and p is the particle's momentum. For particles in a fluid at thermal equilibrium, the relevant momentum scale is the thermal momentum p \approx \sqrt{2 m k_B T}, where m is the particle mass, k_B is Boltzmann's constant, and T is the temperature; this yields an estimate for the wavelength associated with thermal motion.^[41] In the quantum regime of a fluid, quantum effects dominate when the de Broglie wavelength exceeds the average interparticle spacing d = n^{-1/3}, where n is the number density; this condition implies significant overlap of the particles' wavefunctions, marking the onset of quantum degeneracy. To derive the precise criterion, the thermal de Broglie wavelength is defined as \lambda_{th} = h / \sqrt{2 \pi m k_B T}, which arises from the quantum partition function for non-interacting particles and accounts for the spread in thermal momenta. Quantum degeneracy occurs when \lambda_{th} n^{1/3} \gtrsim 1, as this ensures the wave packets overlap sufficiently for collective quantum behavior to emerge.^[42] For dense fluids such as liquid helium, with interparticle spacings on the order of angstroms, the condition \lambda_{th} n^{1/3} > 1 is satisfied at temperatures ranging from millikelvin to a few kelvin, enabling quantum fluid phenomena.

Temperature Thresholds

The temperature thresholds for quantum fluid transitions mark the points at which thermal energy becomes comparable to quantum mechanical energy scales, leading to macroscopic quantum coherence in bosonic or fermionic systems. These thresholds are derived using statistical mechanics, where the occupation numbers of quantum states determine the onset of condensation or pairing. For bosons, the critical temperature arises when the chemical potential reaches the ground-state energy, allowing macroscopic occupation of the lowest energy state; for fermions, degeneracy sets in at the Fermi temperature, with superfluidity emerging at lower temperatures through pairing mechanisms. For an ideal Bose gas, the Bose-Einstein condensation temperature T_c is given by

k_B T_c = \frac{h^2}{2\pi m} \left( \frac{n}{\zeta(3/2)} \right)^{2/3},

where h is Planck's constant, m is the particle mass, n is the number density, k_B is Boltzmann's constant, and \zeta(3/2) \approx 2.612 is the Riemann zeta function value. This formula indicates that T_c scales with density and inversely with mass, setting the scale for quantum degeneracy in dilute gases. In interacting systems, such as ultracold atomic gases, corrections shift T_c by a few percent due to mean-field effects and beyond. For fermionic systems, the Fermi temperature T_F defines the degeneracy scale, beyond which Pauli exclusion dominates, given by

T_F = \frac{\hbar^2}{2 m k_B} (3\pi^2 n)^{2/3},

with \hbar = h / 2\pi. Superfluidity in fermions, as in paired states, occurs well below T_F via mechanisms like BCS pairing, where the transition temperature T_c is exponentially suppressed relative to T_F in weakly attractive systems. This pairing enables superfluid transitions in fermionic quantum fluids despite the absence of a direct condensate.^[43] In liquid helium-4, a strongly interacting bosonic system, the superfluid transition occurs at the lambda point T_\lambda \approx 2.17 K under saturated vapor pressure, significantly lower than the ideal gas prediction of about 3.13 K due to repulsive interactions that harden the spectrum and reduce phase space for condensation.^[44] For helium-3, a fermionic liquid, the superfluid transition temperature is pressure-dependent, reaching a maximum of ≈2.5 mK near 3 bar and ≈0.93 mK at saturated vapor pressure, arising from p-wave pairing of fermions near the Fermi surface, with T_c / T_F \sim 10^{-3} reflecting the strength of the attractive interaction in this system.^[45]^[46] The derivation of these thresholds begins with the grand-canonical partition function for non-interacting particles, \mathcal{Z} = \prod_k \frac{1}{1 - [z](/page/Z) e^{-\beta \epsilon_k}} for bosons (where [z](/page/Z) = e^{\beta \mu} is the fugacity and \beta = 1 / k_B T), leading to the total particle number N = \sum_k \frac{1}{[z](/page/Z)^{-1} e^{\beta \epsilon_k} - 1}. For a continuum in three dimensions, the excited-state occupation integrates to N_e = g_{3/2}([z](/page/Z)) (V / \lambda^3), where \lambda = h / \sqrt{2\pi m k_B T} is the thermal wavelength and g_{3/2}([z](/page/Z)) is the polylogarithm function; condensation occurs when [z](/page/Z) \to 1 and N_e < N, yielding T_c such that N = \zeta(3/2) V / \lambda_c^3. For fermions, the analogous Fermi-Dirac integral at T = 0 fills states up to \epsilon_F, with T_F = \epsilon_F / k_B, and finite-temperature occupation numbers f_k = 1 / (e^{\beta (\epsilon_k - \mu)} + 1) broaden the distribution. Interactions introduce corrections via perturbation theory or renormalization group methods, shifting thresholds by altering effective masses and scattering lengths, as seen in helium where strong correlations require beyond-mean-field treatments.^[47]

Applications

Low-Temperature Experiments

Low-temperature experiments on quantum fluids require sophisticated cryogenic infrastructure to access the millikelvin regime, where quantum effects dominate. The 3He-4He dilution refrigerator is the cornerstone of such setups, leveraging the phase separation between helium-3 and helium-4 isotopes in a superfluid mixture to achieve continuous cooling below 300 mK, with base temperatures as low as 2-10 mK depending on the design and cooling power.^[48] These systems typically feature a mixing chamber where 3He dissolves into superfluid 4He, releasing heat that is extracted via circulating 3He, enabling stable operation for extended periods in studies of superfluid helium and Bose-Einstein condensates. For even lower temperatures in helium-3 experiments, Pomeranchuk cooling complements dilution refrigeration by adiabatically compressing solid 3He, exploiting its anomalous property where the solid phase has higher entropy than the liquid below 0.32 K, thus reducing temperature upon solidification.^[49] This method, first applied in the discovery of superfluid 3He, reaches sub-millikelvin temperatures and is particularly useful for probing fermionic superfluid phases under controlled pressure. Flow visualization techniques in superfluids utilize second sound waves—temperature waves propagating without mass flow—to quantify counterflow dynamics between the normal and superfluid components, revealing dissipation and turbulence thresholds.^[50] Experiments often employ optical methods, such as tracing metastable helium molecules or solid hydrogen particles, to image these waves and map velocity profiles in channels, providing insights into the two-fluid model's validity at high relative velocities.^[51] Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) and ultrasound serve as key probes for vortex dynamics and phase transitions in quantum fluids. In superfluid helium, NMR detects spatial variations in the order parameter around quantized vortices through frequency shifts and linewidth broadening, enabling mapping of vortex textures in 3He phases.^[52] Ultrasound, meanwhile, measures sound attenuation and speed to track vortex pinning and reconnection in helium, as well as to identify symmetry-breaking transitions in superconductors by monitoring acoustic anomalies near critical points.^[53]^[54] Prominent facilities hosting these experiments include dilution refrigerators at NIST, where compact closed-cycle systems achieve 70 mK for neutron scattering studies of quantum fluids, and at CERN, where large-scale units cool multi-ton masses to below 250 mK for precision particle physics investigations involving superfluid targets.^[55]^[56]^[57]

Emerging Technologies

Superconducting qubits, which rely on the quantum fluid properties of superconductors, form the basis of many current quantum computing architectures. These qubits are typically implemented using Josephson junctions, nonlinear superconducting elements that enable tunable coupling and control of quantum states. In 2019, Google's Sycamore processor, a 53-qubit device built with transmon qubits incorporating Josephson junctions, demonstrated quantum supremacy by performing a random circuit sampling task in 200 seconds—a computation estimated to take classical supercomputers up to 10,000 years.^[58] This milestone highlighted the potential of superconducting quantum fluids for scalable quantum information processing, with ongoing improvements in coherence times and gate fidelities exceeding 99.9% in recent iterations.^[58] Helium cryogenics plays a critical role in maintaining the low temperatures required for superconducting technologies, with superfluid helium-4 below 2.17 K used in advanced applications such as particle accelerators. In medical imaging, liquid helium at 4.2 K cools the niobium-titanium coils of MRI magnets, enabling stable magnetic fields up to 3 T for high-resolution scans without electrical resistance.^[59] For particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN employs superfluid helium at 1.9 K to cool its 8.3 T dipole magnets, distributing heat efficiently through the fluid's zero-viscosity flow and high thermal conductivity, which sustains the collider's 27 km ring during high-energy proton collisions.^[60] Ultracold atomic gases, including Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), serve as versatile quantum simulators to model complex quantum fluid behaviors inaccessible to classical computation. These systems replicate the Hubbard model to investigate high-temperature superconductivity mechanisms, such as pairing in fermionic lattices, providing insights into cuprate materials where transition temperatures exceed 100 K.^[61] Similarly, dipolar ultracold gases simulate the extreme conditions inside neutron stars, capturing superfluid vortex dynamics and crust-core transitions through controlled interactions in optical traps.^[62] In precision timekeeping, BECs enhance atomic clocks by suppressing thermal noise and enabling coherent matter-wave interferometry; recent developments include continuous-wave strontium BECs that maintain coherence for hours, improving clock stability to 10^{-18} fractional frequency uncertainty over daily timescales.^[63] Post-2020 advances have expanded quantum fluid applications into hybrid systems and exotic many-body regimes. Hybrid magnet-superconductor platforms integrate quantum fluids with topological states, enabling robust qubit encoding via Majorana fermions for fault-tolerant computing, with prototypes demonstrating protected edge modes at millikelvin temperatures.^[64] Unitary Fermi gases, tuned to infinite scattering length, have advanced understanding of strongly interacting quantum fluids through neural-network quantum state simulations, revealing universal superfluid properties like Tan contact correlations that bridge few-body and thermodynamic limits.^[65] In 2025, research has explored trapped electrons on quantum fluids and solids as a promising route for building qubits, offering new approaches to quantum computing hardware.^[66] These developments underscore quantum fluids' role in probing non-equilibrium dynamics, such as many-body interferometry in lattice gases, paving the way for next-generation quantum technologies.^[67]

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[PDF] David M. Lee - Nobel Lecture
Fritz London's great contribution¹³ was to note that superfluidity could be ... de Broglie wavelength is on the order of the mean interparticle spacing.
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A theory of superconductivity is presented, based on the fact that the interaction between electrons resulting from virtual exchange of phonons is attractive.
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None
### Summary of Content on Liquid Helium from Feynman (1957)
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[PDF] Bose-Einstein Condensation in Alkali Gases - Nobel Prize
In 1924 the physicist S. N. Bose from Dacca University in India sent Einstein a paper, in which the Planck distribution law for photons was derived by ...Missing: Satyendra Nath
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The story of superconductivity begins in 1911, when Heike Kamerlingh Onnes first discovered the phenomenon.
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One hundred years ago, on April 8, 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes and his staff at the Leiden cryogenic laboratory were the first to observe superconductivity [1] ...
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Osheroff and Robert C. Richardson discovered at the beginning of the 1970s, in the low-temperature laboratory at Cornell University, that the helium isotope ...
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Nobel Prize in Physics to Lee, Osheroff and Richardson for ...
Richardson have been awarded the 1996 Nobel Prize in. Physics for their discovery of super- fluidity in helium-3. Their experi- ments, done in the low ...
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Observation of Bose-Einstein Condensation in a Dilute Atomic Vapor
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January 1938: Discovery of Superfluidity - American Physical Society
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The Nobel Prize in Physics 1996 - Advanced information
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Superconductivity | CERN
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In our experiment we take a gas of many atoms (about 5 to 10 million) and by lowering the temperature we make the atoms wavelengths very long. This makes our ...
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Condensation of Pairs of Fermionic Atoms near a Feshbach ...
We have observed Bose-Einstein condensation of pairs of fermionic atoms in an ultracold 6 L i gas at magnetic fields above a Feshbach resonance.
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Calculation of the recovery heat flux from film boiling in superfluid ...
A method for calculating the recovery heat flux in saturated He II heat transfer is presented. The approach combines the molecular kinetic equations for film ...
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Violation of the London law and Onsager–Feynman quantization in ...
Jun 17, 2007 · Onsager and Feynman pointed out that the superfluid velocity (v) in these vortices in single-component systems is quantized, and the circulation ...
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QUANTIZED VORTICES AND TURBULENCE IN HELIUM II
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[PDF] Quantized Phase Slippage in Superfluid *He - Berkeley Physics
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De Broglie Wavelength - Richard Fitzpatrick
Quantum effects become important if the mean inter-particle distance, $ r_d$ , becomes comparable, or less than, the de Broglie wavelength.
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Strongly correlated quantum fluids: ultracold quantum gases ...
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Nobel Lecture: Superfluid : the early days as seen by a theorist
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Bose-Einstein condensation in a canonical ensemble with fixed total ...
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Theoretical Models for the Cooling Power and Base Temperature of ...
Aug 7, 2025 · 3He/4He dilution refrigerators are widely used for applications requiring continuous cooling at temperatures below approximately 300 mK.
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[PDF] Robert C. Richardson - Nobel Lecture
The entropies of the liquid and solid phases are equal at 0.32 K. At lower temperatures Pomeranchuk's suggestion for cooling will work. (Entropy per mole).
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Performance of a Miniature, Closed-Cycle Dilution Refrigerator at ...
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ICE Dil Fridge | NIST - National Institute of Standards and Technology
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Dilution Refrigeration of Multi-Ton Cold Masses
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Mar 4, 2021 · Liquid helium is the only medium cold enough to rid metals of their electrical resistance, enabling them to generate powerful and stable magnetic fields.
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Cryogenics: Low temperatures, high performance - CERN
Superfluid helium has remarkable properties, including very high thermal conductivity; it is an efficient heat conductor. These qualities make helium an ...
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Quantum simulations with ultracold atoms in optical lattices - Science
Sep 8, 2017 · Ultracold atoms in optical lattices represent an ideal platform for simulations of quantum many-body problems.
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Investigating the crust of neutron stars with neural-network quantum ...
Mar 19, 2025 · In this work, we introduce a variational Monte Carlo method based on a neural Pfaffian-Jastrow quantum state, which allows us to model the transition from the ...
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Continuous Bose–Einstein condensation - Nature
Jun 8, 2022 · Bose–Einstein condensates (BECs) are macroscopic coherent matter waves that have revolutionized quantum science and atomic physics.
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Mar 3, 2025 · Magnet–superconductor hybrid (MSH) systems have recently emerged as one of the most significant developments in condensed matter physics.
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May 8, 2024 · The unitary Fermi gas (UFG) is a strongly interacting system that exhibits stable superfluid behavior. Studying the BCS-BEC crossover near the ...
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Manybody interferometry of quantum fluids | Science Advances
Jul 19, 2024 · We present an approach that we term “manybody Ramsey interferometry” that combines adiabatic state preparation and Ramsey spectroscopy.