Helium Recovery & Reliquefaction For Low Temperature Research

该奖项由《2009年美国复苏和再投资法案》(公法111-5)资助。该奖项将为哈佛大学氦回收和再液化基础设施的完成提供部分支持。该项目包括多用户核磁共振设施和15名教职员工(8名物理、3名工程和4名化学)实验室的氦气回收管道，以及收集、液化和分配回收的氦的固定设备。该项目还将包括运行所需的暖通空调、电气和控制基础设施。当实验或探测器需要寒冷环境时，氦被广泛用于物理、工程、化学和生物研究。目前和未来的研究活动包括：精确测量电子磁矩和精细结构常数，并用轻子进行最严格的电荷-宇称-时间对称性测试；使用氦作为缓冲气体，将新的原子和分子冷却成玻色-爱因斯坦凝聚体和量子费米子系统；为研究高T_c超导体和石墨烯等奇异相关电子材料的电子有序提供冷却；允许访问由砷化镓、碳纳米管、石墨烯和钻石等材料制成的纳米结构中的量子化能级；并允许对新合成的分子和催化剂进行核磁共振、穆斯堡尔光谱和扫描隧道光谱等诊断。每年将有300多名学生和博士后从事涉及液氦的物理、化学和材料科学的研究项目。这种液化器将节省氦气，这是一种宝贵的不可再生资源，耗电量约为脉冲管冰箱等替代技术的五分之一。

This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).This award will provide partial support for the completion of Harvard's helium recovery and reliquefaction infrastructure . The project includes helium gas recovery piping from a multi-user nuclear magnetic resonance facility and from the labs of 15 faculty members (8 physics, 3 engineering, and 4 chemistry), and the fixed equipment to collect, liquefy, and dispense the recovered helium. The project would also include HVAC, electrical, and control infrastructure required for operation.Helium is used extensively in physics, engineering, chemistry, and biology research whenever cold environments are needed for experiments or detectors. Current and future research activities include making accurate measurement of the electron magnetic moment and the fine structure constant, and the most stringent test of charge-parity-time symmetry with leptons; using helium as a buffer gas to cool new atoms and molecules into Bose-Einstein condensates and quantum Fermionic systems; providing cooling for studies of the electronic orders in exotic correlated electron materials such as high-Tc superconductors and graphene; allowing access to the quantized energy levels in nanostructures fabricated from materials such as GaAs, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and diamond; and permitting diagnostics such as nuclear magnetic resonance, Mossbauer spectroscopy, and scanning tunneling spectroscopy of newly synthesized molecules and catalysts.Each year, over 300 students and postdocs will be working on research projects in physics, chemistry, and materials science that involve liquid helium. The liquefier would conserve helium, a precious nonrenewable resource, and would consume approximately one-fifth the electricity of alternative technologies such as pulse tube refrigerators.