Prestigious Hawking Fellowship awarded to King's physicist to uncover mysteries of helium

King's physicist Dr Sam Patrick has been awarded a Stephen Hawking Postdoctoral Fellowship to explore the mysterious properties of helium.

Introduced in 2018 - the year of Professor Stephen Hawking's death, the fellowship aims to honour the memory of the world leading British physicist by funding exceptional early career researchers to pursue a range of theoretical physics disciplines. It also supports them to undertake public engagement activities, furthering Hawking's work in bringing science into popular culture.

An expert in black hole physics and fluid dynamics, Sam Patrick aims to develop better theories to explain the properties of liquid helium, which continues to puzzle scientists when studied at microscopic scales. This has potential applications across health and transport technologies.

Helium is a bizarre substance...As a superfluid - a liquid with zero viscosity that keeps flowing forever - helium shows some really strange quantum behaviour we'd like to understand better."

Whilst it is the second element of the periodic table and was discovered over 150 years ago, there are still aspects of helium that have been confusing scientists for the best part of the century. Furthermore, given it plays a key role as a cooling source for superconducting magnets, it is vital to technologies such as MRI scanners.

Dr Patrick said, 'helium is a bizarre substance. It is the only element that stays liquid all the way down to absolute zero, the equivalent of -273.15 Celsius. As a superfluid - a liquid with zero viscosity that keeps flowing forever - helium shows some really strange quantum behaviour we'd like to understand better."

Dr Patrick will be studying liquid helium and its behaviours at the quantum level, in order to contribute to developing a more robust quantum theory to explain liquid helium's properties.

He said, "there are good theories that describe the flow of helium on large scales, but if you want to zoom in to the atomic scale and understand what's happening, these theories break down.

"On these atomic scales, you get tiny whirlpools called quantum vortices, and if you bring two of these vortices close together, they spin around each other really quickly and make tiny waves on the surface of the liquid. So far, there are no models that fully capture these wave-vortex interactions."

"Another reason wave-vortex interactions are interesting is because they model the way light behaves around a black hole...We hope that by studying this in a quantum liquid like superfluid helium, we might learn something about the quantum properties of black holes."

As part of his fellowship, Dr Patrick will also lead a public engagement programme aimed at improving public understanding of quantum science, through the UK's National Quantum Technology Programme during 2025 - the International Year of Quantum. Collaborating with the University of Nottingham, he will be producing videos of experts discussing their research on quantum, and showcasing these exhibits as part of an exhibition at the University of Nottingham Cosmic Titans. The exhibition will display sculptures by critically acclaimed artist, Conrad Shawcross, and vintage photography capturing work from across the National Quantum Technology Programme.

The models Dr Patrick is hoping to develop as part of his fellowship will also inform our understanding of black holes. He was part of a recent study between King's and the University of Nottingham that created black holes in the lab. By exploiting helium's properties, the scientists were able to rotate it in vortices, which exhibit unusual quantum properties, mimicking the gravitational conditions near rotating black holes.

Dr Patrick said, "another reason wave-vortex interactions are interesting is because they model the way light behaves around a black hole. If you imagine pulling the plug in the kitchen sink, the water forms a vortex over the plug hole as its draining. The effect of the drain on small waves mimics the gravitational pull exerted by a black hole on light. The vortex mimics the fact that black holes also spin.

"We hope that by studying this in a quantum liquid like superfluid helium, we might learn something about the quantum properties of black holes."

The fellowship's strong focus on public engagement is especially inspiring, and I'm eager to find new ways of sharing these ideas with the public, in line with Hawking's outstanding outreach legacy."

Helium is used across so many different technologies, alongside its use as a coolant in superconductors, superfluid optomechanics and quantum sensing platforms use the stillness of helium to measure tiny forces with applications across multiple technologies. These are some of the areas that stands to benefit from improved modelling of vortices in helium.

Dr Patrick said, "I'm thrilled to have this opportunity to study the connection between quantum fluids and black holes further, exploring questions that are right at the edge of our understanding.

"The fellowship's strong focus on public engagement is especially inspiring, and I'm eager to find new ways of sharing these ideas with the public, in line with Hawking's outstanding outreach legacy."

Professor Ruth Gregory, Head of the Department of Physics and collaborator on the fellowship, said ""Sam is a very deserving recipient of the Hawking Fellowship as he genuinely values science communication as well as being a super-talented and keen physicist. Finding novel ways of testing the quantum aspects of black holes is very much at the heart of Stephen's legacy."