Slowly unwinding in 3He.

McClintock, Peter V. E. (1992) Slowly unwinding in 3He. Nature, 356 (6372). pp. 749-750.

Abstract

Quantized vortices in superfluid 3He wrapped around a smooth wire can slowly unzip themselves, precessing as they do so, according to a recent experiment by R. E. Packard and colleagues (R. J. Zieve et ai. Phys. Rev. Leu. 68, 1327- 1330; 1992) at the University of California at Berkeley. This discovery was the unexpected bonus of an experiment which yielded an extremely accurate value of the quantum of circulation.