Helium Recovery & Reliquefaction For Low Temperature Research

Harvard University, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

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.