Isotopes of helium
has nine known isotopes, but only helium-3 and helium-4 are stable. All radioisotopes are short-lived; the only particle-bound ones are He and He with half-lives 806.9 and 119.5 milliseconds.
In Earth's atmosphere, the ratio of He to He is. However, the isotopic abundance of helium varies greatly depending on its origin, though helium-4 is always in great preponderance. In the Local Interstellar Cloud, the proportion of He to He is, which is about 120 times higher than in Earth's atmosphere. Rocks from Earth's crust have isotope ratios varying by as much as a factor of ten; this is used in geology to investigate the origin of rocks and the composition of the Earth's mantle. The different formation processes of the two stable isotopes of helium produce the differing isotope abundances.
Equal mixtures of liquid He and He below separate into two immiscible phases due to differences in quantum statistics: He atoms are bosons while He atoms are fermions. Dilution refrigerators take advantage of the immiscibility of these two isotopes to achieve temperatures as low as a few millikelvin.
A mix of the two isotopes spontaneously separates into He-rich and He-rich regions. Phase separation also exists in ultracold gas systems. It has been shown experimentally in a two-component ultracold Fermi gas case. The phase separation can compete with other phenomena as vortex lattice formation or an exotic Fulde–Ferrell–Larkin–Ovchinnikov phase.
List of isotopes
Helium-2 (diproton)
Helium-2, He, is unbound. The only bound atom with a mass number of 2 is deuterium. The nucleus of 2He, a diproton, consists of two protons with no neutrons. Its instability is due to spin–spin interactions in the nuclear force and the Pauli exclusion principle, which states that within a given quantum system two or more identical particles with the same half-integer spins cannot simultaneously occupy the same quantum state; so He's two protons have opposite-aligned spins and the diproton itself has negative binding energy.A rare form of radioactivity is diproton emission, where a nucleus emits two protons in a quasi-bound S0 configuration, which then separate. In 2000, Oak Ridge National Laboratory detected two-proton emission from, produced by a ion beam onto a proton-rich target. But the experiment didn't have the sensitivity to distinguish if the emission was a decay by two separate protons, or by a diproton. In 2008, the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare confirmed 18Ne decayed to a diproton with a 31% branching ratio. Several experiments have since detected diproton emission from other isotopes.
The lack of a bound diproton has been used to argue for fine-tuning for the development of life due to its effect on Big Bang nucleosynthesis and stellar evolution. Hypothetical models suggest that if the strong force was 2% greater, then diprotons would be bound. Recent studies have found that a universe with bound diprotons doesn’t preclude the development of stars and life.
One impact of a hypothetical bound diproton is a change to the early steps of the proton-proton chain. In our universe, the first step of the proton-proton chain proceeds via the weak force,
In the hypothetical, instead a diproton can form without the weak force,
The diproton would then beta-plus decays into deuterium:
With the overall formula,
Under the influence of electromagnetic interactions, the Jaffe-Low primitives may leave the unitary cut, creating narrow two-nucleon resonances, like a diproton resonance with a mass of 2000 MeV and a width of a few hundred keV. To search for this resonance, a beam of protons with kinetic energy 250 MeV and an energy spread below 100 keV is required, which is feasible considering the electron cooling of the beam.
Helium-3
He is the only stable isotope other than H with more protons than neutrons. There are many such unstable isotopes, such as Be and B. There is only a trace of He on Earth, mainly present since the formation of the Earth, although some falls to Earth trapped in cosmic dust. Trace amounts are also produced by the beta decay of tritium. In stars, however, He is more abundant, a product of nuclear fusion. Extraplanetary material, such as lunar and asteroid regolith, has traces of He from solar wind bombardment.To become superfluid, He must be cooled to 2.5 millikelvin, ~900 times lower than He. This difference is explained by quantum statistics: He atoms are fermions, while He atoms are bosons, which condense to a superfluid more easily.
Helium-4
The most common isotope, He, is produced on Earth by alpha decay of heavier elements; the alpha particles that emerge are fully ionized He nuclei. He is an unusually stable nucleus because it is doubly magic. It was formed in enormous quantities in Big Bang nucleosynthesis.Terrestrial helium consists almost exclusively of He. He's boiling point of is the lowest of all known substances except He. When cooled further to, it becomes a unique superfluid with zero viscosity. It solidifies only at pressures above 25 atmospheres, where it melts at.
Helium-5
Helium-5 is extremely unstable, decaying to helium-4 with a half-life of 602 yoctoseconds. It is briefly produced in the favorable fusion reaction:The reaction is greatly enhanced by the existence of a resonance. Helium-5, which has a natural spin state of -3/2 at the 0 MeV ground state, has a +3/2 excited spin state at 16.84 MeV. Because the reaction creates helium-5 nuclei with an energy level close to this state, it happens more frequently. This was discovered by Egon Bretscher, who was investigating weaponization of fusion reactions for the Manhattan Project.
The DT reaction specifically is 100 times more likely than the DD reaction at relevant energies, but would be similar without the resonance. The H-He reaction benefits from a similar resonance in lithium-5, but is Coulomb-suppressed i.e. the +2 helium nucleus charge increases the electrostatic repulsion for fusing nuclei.