Quasi-one-dimensional 4He in nanopores

Low temperature structural and superfluid properties of 4He confined in cylindrical nanopores are theoretically investigated by means of first-principle quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations. We vary the density of 4He inside the pore, as well as the pore diameter and the potential describing the interaction of each 4 He atom with the pore surface. Accordingly, the 4He fluid inside the pore forms either a single channel along the axis, or a series of concentric cylindrical shells, with varying degrees of shell overlap. In the limit of pore length greatly exceeding its radius, the 4He fluid always displays markedly one-dimensional behavior, with no “dimensional crossover” above some specific pore radius and/or as multiple concentric shells form, in contrast to what was recently claimed by other authors [Phys. Rev. B 101, 104505 (2020)]. Indeed, the predicted robustness of one-dimensional physics suggests that this system may offer a broadly viable pathway to the experimental observation of exotic behavior of, e.g., junctions of interacting Tomonaga-Luttinger liquids, in an appropriately designed network of nanopores.