Anisotropic Phases of Superfluid 3He in Compressed Aerogel

It has been shown that the relative stabilities of various superfluid states of He-3 can be influenced by anisotropy in a silica aerogel framework. We prepared a suite of aerogel samples compressed up to 30% for which we performed pulsed NMR on He-3 imbibed within the aerogel. We identified A and B phases and determined their magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams as a function of strain. From these results, we infer that the B phase is distorted by negative strain forming an anisotropic superfluid state more stable than the A phase.