Kapitza resistance of laser-annealed surfaces

Our understanding of the phonon processes at the interfaces between two media is still quite rudimentary. Particularly notorious is the helium-solid interface, where the accoustic impedances differ by a large amount. It is well known that the Kapitza resistance, i.e. the thermal boundary resistance between helium and a solid, is usually up to 100 times smaller than predicted by the acoustic theory as formulated by Khalatnikov [1]. However, it was shown by J. WEBER et al. [2] that there was no discrepancy at surfaces of freshly cleaved crystals, i.e. at surfaces of exceptional good quality. Thus it is clear that surface irregularities must be responsible for the anomalous Kapitza resistance.…