Vortex-loops and solid nucleation in superfluid ⁴He and ³He

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We propose a new model for the nature of the nucleation of solid from the superfluid phases of ⁴He and ³He. Unique to the superfluid phases the solid nucleation involves an extremely fast solidification front. This results in a local release of pressure and a velocity field in the superfluid. The superfluid velocity in turn facilitates the nucleation of vortex-loops. The kinetic energy gain of this process balances the surface tension, as the solid surface is quickly covered by many vortex-loops ("hairy snow-ball"). We show that this scenario gives good agreement with experiments on heterogeneous nucleation, which differ with the classical theory of homogeneous nucleation by 8 orders of magnitude. We propose several experiments that could show the involvement of vortices with solid nucleation.