Abstract:
The Letter analyzes stability of spin precession currents in superfluid $^3$He-B when the precession angle is very close to 104$^\circ$. In this limit a spin-precession vortex has a very large core, and a barrier blocking motion of these large-core vortices across the current streamlines (phase slip) disappears at precession-phase gradients much smaller than critical gradients estimated from the Landau criterion. Nevertheless, spin precession currents remain stable up to the Landau critical gradients, since in this case there is a barrier, which blocks the phase slip at very early stage of vortex-core nucleation. The Letter also predicts a second-order phase transition between a parity-symmetric and parity-nonsymmetric spin-precession vortex cores at the precession angle 126.5$^\circ$.
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