Anisotropic phases of superfluid 3He in compressed aerogel

It has been shown that the relative stabilities of various superfluid states of 3He can be influenced by anisotropy in a silica aerogel framework. We prepared a suite of aerogel samples compressed up to 30% for which we performed pulsed NMR on 3He imbibed within the aerogel. We identified A and B-phases and determined their magnetic field-temperature phase diagrams as a function of strain. From these results we infer that the B-phase is distorted by negative strain forming an anisotropic superfluid state more stable than the A-phase.