Condensation of helium in aerogel and athermal dynamics of the random-field Ising model

Phys Rev Lett. 2014 Aug 22;113(8):085301. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.085301. Epub 2014 Aug 21.

Abstract

High resolution measurements reveal that condensation isotherms of (4)He in high porosity silica aerogel become discontinuous below a critical temperature. We show that this behavior does not correspond to an equilibrium phase transition modified by the disorder induced by the aerogel structure, but to the disorder-driven critical point predicted for the athermal out-of-equilibrium dynamics of the random-field Ising model. Our results evidence the key role of nonequilibrium effects in the phase transitions of disordered systems.