Chiral symmetry breaking in superfluid 3He-A.

Abstract

Spontaneous symmetry breaking is an important concept in many branches of physics. In helium-3 ((3)He), the breaking of symmetry leads to the orbital chirality in the superfluid phase known as (3)He-A. Chirality is a fundamental property of (3)He-A, but its direct detection has been challenging. We report direct detection of chirality by transport measurements of electrons trapped below a free surface of (3)He-A. In particular, we observed the so-called intrinsic Magnus force experienced by a moving electron; the direction of the force directly reflected the chirality. We further showed that, at the superfluid transition, the system selected either right- or left-handed chirality. The observation of such selection directly demonstrates chiral symmetry breaking.