Surface Tension Maximum of Liquid 3He—Experimental Study

The surface tension of liquid 3He was measured as a function of temperature by means of the capillary rise method. Suzuki et al. [Europhysics Lett. 5, 333 (1988)] reported that the surface tension was almost temperature independent below 120 mK. Here we have examined it with greater precision and found that it has a small maximum around 100 mK. The surface tension increased with temperature from 35 mK and had a maximum of about 3×10−4 as a fraction of the surface tension at 0 K. It was found that the surface tension maximum can be attributed mainly to the T4 ln T variation which has been theoretically derived by Misawa on the basis of a local approximation for the entropy including Fermi liquid effect.