This Special Grant for Exploratory Research (SGER) award provides funds to support the construction, testing, and development for scientific use of an ultra-slow, ultra-cold "superleak" superfluid helium beam. The superleak helium beam offers seemingly unprecedented directionality and intensity in addition to the novel coherence properties intrinsic to the superfluid itself. Although the superleak source is still very much in a developmental stage, it seems increasingly likely to offer extraordinary and completely novel ways of investigating superfluid helium and of characterizing and synthesizing materials, particularly on nanoscale dimensions.
