Polar Phase of Superfluid 3He in Anisotropic Aerogel

We report the first observation of the polar phase of superfluid He-3. This phase appears in He-3 confined in a new type of aerogel with a nearly parallel arrangement of strands which play the role of ordered impurities. Our experiments qualitatively agree with theoretical predictions and suggest that in other systems with unconventional Cooper pairing (e.g., in unconventional superconductors) similar phenomena may be found in the presence of anisotropic impurities.