Publications [#245596] of Robert P. Behringer
Papers Published
- Metcalfe, G; Behringer, RP, Using superfluid mixtures to probe convective instabilities,
Physica D: Nonlinear Phenomena, vol. 51 no. 1-3
(August 1991),
pp. 520-530, Elsevier BV, ISSN 0167-2789 [doi]
(last updated on 2019/02/20)Abstract:
When the height d of a convecting layer of a dilute solution of3He in superfluid4He is much greater than a characteristic dissipation length λ0, the superfluid mixture behaves as if it were a single-component classical fluid, but one with the extraordinarily broad and interesting Prandtl number range of 0.04 < Pr < 1.5. We have made the first direct measurements of λ0by observing its effect on the critical Rayleigh number Rc, thus determining quantitatively how closely superfluid mixture convection matches standard Rayleigh-Bénard convection. Two-fluid effects can be only a few percent for 1.0 < T < 2.0 K. We also report a series of measurements near the crossing of the skewed-varicose and oscillatory instabilities showing the effects of instability competition. © 1991.