Heat capacity of quantum adsorbates: Hydrogen and helium on evaporated gold films

The author has constructed an apparatus to make specific heat measurements of quantum gases adsorbed on metallic films at temperatures between 0.3 and 4 K. He has used this apparatus to study quench-condensed hydrogen films between 4 and 923 layers thick with J = 1 concentrations between 0.28 and 0.75 deposited on an evaporated gold surface. He has observed that the orientational ordering of the J = 1 molecules depends on the substrate temperature during deposition of the hydrogen film. He has inferred that the density of the films condensed at the lowest temperatures is 25% higher than in bulk H{sub 2} crystals and have observed that the structure of those films is affected by annealing at 3.4 K. The author has measured the J = 1 to J = 0 conversion rate to be comparable to that of the bulk for thick films; however, he found evidence that the gold surface catalyzes conversion in the first two to four layers. He has also used this apparatus to study films of {sup 4}He less than one layer thick adsorbed on an evaporated gold surface. He shows that the phase diagram of the system is similar to that for {sup 4}He/graphite although not as rich in structure, and the phase boundaries occur at different coverages and temperatures. At coverages below about half a layer and at sufficiently high temperatures, the {sup 4}He behaves like a two-dimensional noninteracting Bose gas. At lower temperatures and higher coverages, liquidlike and solidlike behavior is observed. The Appendix shows measurements of the far-infrared absorptivity of the high-{Tc} superconductor La{sub 1.87}Sr{sub 0.13}CuO{sub 4}