The viscosity of liquid helium 3

Measurements have been made of the viscosity of liquid 3 He under its saturated vapour pressure in the temperature range 0*14-2*1°K. In the experiments, a polished cylinder of quartz oscillates in the liquid in its fundamental elastic torsional mode, the viscosity being obtained by observing the logarithmic decrement of the system. The resulting values of the viscosity are in agreement with those of Osborne et al. (1949) and of Taylor and Dash (1957), but are appreciably higher than those of Zinov'eva (1958). At lower temperatures the present results appear to extrapolate towards values consistent with the coefficients of the absorption of sound observed by Abel et al. (1961), and are not inconsistent with the 1/T 2 dependence predicted by Landau's theory of a Fermi liquid.