Critical Behavior and Scaling of Confined 3 He - 4 He Mixtures

When helium is confined to a uniform small dimension L, its behavior is modified due to the limitation of the growth of the correlation length. This has been explored for planar confinement over a wide range of L. Less is known about confined mixtures, especially in the case of the specific heat. Here two principal effects come into play: the magnitude of the correlation length ξ increases, and the measured heat capacity Cpx must be converted to Cpφ, where φ = μ3 μ4, before finite-size scaling predictions can be verified. The increase in ξ makes a given confinement L “look smaller” as the concentration x is increased. This, as well as changes of L itself, can be used to test predictions of correlation-length scaling. We report measurements of the specific heat of confined mixtures and compare with the well established scaling for the pure system. PACS: 67.60.-g, 65.20+w, 64.70.-p, 64.60.-i