Acoustic damping limits superfluid helium as a thermal bath for mechanical resonators
Thermalization is a persistent problem for cryogenic mechanical resonators. The weak supports used to obtain high mechanical quality factors are also poor thermal links, while the optical or microwave fields used for readout and control can heat the resonator above the cryostat temperature. Superfluid helium is therefore an appealing exchange medium: it has excellent low-temperature thermal transport and an inviscid superfluid component, suggesting cooling of mechanical devices without the damping associated with an ordinary fluid. Here we test this idea by immersing a \qty{250}{\micro\meter}-diameter yttrium iron garnet sphere in liquid \textsuperscript{4}He and reading out a \(\sim\qty{12.47}{\mega\hertz}\) mechanical mode using cavity magnomechanics. The mechanical linewidth increases from \qty{6.1}{\hertz} in vacuum to \qty{9.1}{\kilo\hertz} after filling the cavity with liquid helium in the normal state, and reaches \qty{17.5}{\kilo\hertz} deep in the superfluid at \qty{84}{\milli\kelvin}. Thus the mechanical quality factor is reduced by more than three orders of magnitude, and crossing into the superfluid does not recover low dissipation. At the same time, the magnon linewidth remains strongly dependent on microwave power at the lowest temperatures, showing that the sphere is not perfectly anchored to the cryostat despite the large mechanical damping. The result follows from acoustic radiation: the surface motion of the sphere efficiently launches gapless longitudinal sound into the liquid, and a radiation-impedance estimate gives a linewidth of order \qty{25}{\kilo\hertz}. Superfluid helium is therefore not a low-loss thermal bath for mechanical modes that efficiently radiate compression waves. Shear motion, on the other hand, may provide a route around this limitation.