SIGNIFICANT EVENTS - SCIENCE EVENTS
12/13/02

BEST Paper to Appear in Physical Review Letters

Prof. Guenter Ahlers (UC, Santa Barbara), principal investigator on the Boundary Effects on the Superfluid Transition (BEST) Experiment, reports that a paper titled "Finite-size scaling and universality of the thermal resistivity of liquid Helium-4 near T" has been accepted for publication in the Physical Review Letters. With Dr. Daniel Murphy of UCSB as the lead author, this paper presents the first piece of experimental evidence supporting the dynamic finite-size scaling and universality near the lambda line of helium-4. The BEST experiment is a collaboration between UCSB and JPL to conduct a flight investigation on the 2nd mission of the Low Temperature Microgravity Physics Facility. Ground investigation provides critical science data to interpret future flight science data, and validates the techniques for the BEST Instrument that will be applied to the flight measurement.