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The thermodynamic and mechanic anomalies within the region 0.1–0.5 K experimentally observed in hexagonal close-packed solid 4He crystal are discussed and interpreted on the basis of a polytypic HCP structure (close-packed stack of 2D crystalline planes on the triangular lattice). It elucidated the principal role of the stacking faults and Shockley's partial dislocations in the quite unexpected low-temperature behavior of the solid 4He. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simultaneous measurements of acoustic emissions (AE) and electromagnetic emissions (EME) during plastic deformation and destruction under uniaxial compression along <001> direction are made on LiF monocrystals after gamma irradiation by 60Co source. The irradiation doses are 1, 2, and 10 Mrad. The EME measurements in the radio-frequency range are carried out using two types of electromagnetic sensors: (i) a simple electrical stub antenna and (ii) a toroidal inductance coil. Two checking experiments on unirradiated crystals are performed as the starting point to discover the effect of gamma irradiation on acoustic and electromagnetic emissive ability of plastically deformed ionic crystals. Unirradiated LiF monocrystals demonstrate high-intensive EME at easy glide and work hardening stages, as well as at the fracture during destruction of the sample. At radiation doses more than ∼1 Mrad, in the active loading stage the EME of LiF monocrystals vanishes, except few individual electromagnetic pulses (only at 1 and 2 Mrad doses), which are time correlated with well-defined drop-jumps on the loading diagram and therefore can be associated with macroscopic crack openings. Moderate electromagnetic activity in irradiated crystals occurs only in the final stage of deformation at the complete fracture of the sample. Thus, after gamma irradiation the formation of polarization currents due to dynamic interaction between charged vacancies and moving dislocations is suppressed, and only EME connected with the redistribution of the free charge on the crack branches is observed. Acoustic emission diagrams of low-irradiated LiF are typical for the work hardening stage in crystals containing a great amount of strong point stoppers. At larger irradiation doses the AE diagram displays quite different behavior at low- and high-loading regions with a sharp boundary between them. The low-loading region shows poor AE activity, which changes sharply into high-active burst-like emission with an increase in loading. The boundary between two regions shifts to higher loadings with radiation dose. The higher is the radiation dose the lower is the relative intensity of AE in the high-stressed region. The physical mechanisms of EME and AE in gamma-irradiated ionic crystals are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To interpret the anomalies in heat capacity CV(T) and temperature-dependent pressure P(T) of solid hexagonal close-packed (hcp) 4He we exploit the model of hcp crystalline polytype with specific lattice degrees of freedom and describe the thermodynamics of impurity-free 4He solid as superposition of phononic and polytypic contributions. The hcp-based polytype is a stack of 2D basal atomic monolayers on triangular lattice packed with arbitrary long (up to infinity) spatial period along the hexagonal c axis perpendicular to the basal planes. It is a crystal with perfect ordering along the layers, but without microscopic translational symmetry in perpendicular direction (which remains, nevertheless, the rotational crystallographic axis of third order, so that the polytype can be considered as semidisordered system). Each atom of the hcp polytype has twelve crystallographic neighbors in both first and second coordination spheres at any arbitrary packing order. It is shown that the crystal of such structure behaves as anisotropic elastic medium with specific dispersion law of phonon excitations along c axis. The free energy and the heat capacity consist of two terms: one of them is a normal contribution [with CV(T) ∼ T3] from phonon excitations in an anisotropic lattice of hexagonal symmetry, and another term (an “excessive” heat) is a contribution resulted by packing entropy from quasi-one-dimensional system of 2D basal planes on triangular lattice stacked randomly along c axis without braking the closest pack between neighboring atomic layers. The excessive part of the free energy has been treated within 1D quasi-Ising (lattice gas) model using the transfer matrix approach. This model makes us possible to interpret successfully the thermodynamic anomaly (heat capacity peak in hcp 4He) observed experimentally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply the model of a crystalline polytype built of close-packed 2D monoatomic basal planes with triangular lattice to interpret the anomalous thermodynamical and mechanical properties of solid hexagonal close-packed (HCP) $$^4\hbox {He}$$ . The polytype is a 3D stack of the basal planes, and its structure can be built from the simplest periodic packing (HCP, FCC, 4H, 5H, 6R, $$\ldots $$ etc.) up to random stacking fault system (RSFS) totally aperiodic in only c-direction perpendicular to the basal planes. RSFS is a crystal without microscopic translation symmetry along c-axis, i.e., entirely disordered in only one spatial direction. Despite of packing disorder, c-direction remains the crystallographic axis of third order at arbitrary sequence of the 2D plates in the whole stack. In a long-wave limit the HCP polytype can be treated as 3D anisotropic continuum, as a result its phonon spectrum and Helmholtz free energy have been calculated. The temperature dependence of the phonon pressure is calculated theoretically and compared with experimental data. A quantitative agreement between the theory and the experiment is achieved. Mechanical properties of $$^4\hbox {He}$$ crystals in the framework of the polytype model are briefly discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of a close-packed polytype with a random stacking fault structure is used to interpret the anomalies of the thermodynamic properties of the disordered (glassy) phase in solid HCP 4He in the so-called supersolid state. The temperature dependence of the phonon pressure is calculated theoretically, and compared to experimental data. A quantitative agreement between the theory and the experiment is achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]