Objective
The aim of the project is to study the propagation of pulses in a medium which is both non-linear and dispersive. This relates to the important technical system of optical solitons for optical fibres. Liquid HeII will be used as medium and propagate pulses of second sound, which means that the time scale is much longer than in the optical case. This makes the second sound in the HeII system much more accessible and the effect of pulse shaping should be more easily observed. The second advantage of using HeII is that its properties can be changed by altering the temperature and so, in this way, the effect of the properties of the medium of the propagating pulse shape can be studied.
A cryoacoustical waveguide will be constructed by filling a capillary tube with liquid HeII. Shaped second sound pulses will be launched into the waveguide by a heater and detected at the far end with a bolometer. The change in shape of pulse due to non-linear and dispersive properties of liquid HeII will be studied. The system will also be modelled and computed pulse shapes compared to those measured. In this way it is hoped to build up an intuition for considering such pulse development. This is lacking at this moment as these pulses behave quite differently to those that propagate in linear materials and which can be Fourier analysed.
Topic(s)
Call for proposal
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EX4 4QL Exeter
United Kingdom