Evidence for a Spatially Modulated Superfluid Phase of 3He under Confinement

In superfluid He-3-B confined in a slab geometry, domain walls between regions of different order parameter orientation are predicted to be energetically stable. Formation of the spatially modulated superfluid stripe phase has been proposed. We confined He-3 in a 1.1 mu m high microfluidic cavity and cooled it into the B phase at low pressure, where the stripe phase is predicted. We measured the surface-induced order parameter distortion with NMR, sensitive to the formation of domains. The results rule out the stripe phase, but are consistent with 2D modulated superfluid order.