Chirality of superfluid 3He-A.

We have used torsional oscillators, containing disk-shaped slabs of superfluid (3)He-A, to probe the chiral orbital textures created by cooling into the superfluid state while continuously rotating. Comparing the observed flow-driven textural transitions with numerical simulations of possible textures shows that an oriented monodomain texture with l antiparallel to the angular velocity Ω(0) is left behind after stopping rotation. The bias toward a particular chirality, while in the vortex state, is due to the inequivalence of energies of vortices of opposite circulation. When spun-up from rest, the critical velocity for vortex nucleation depends on the sense of rotation relative to that of l. A different type of vorticity, apparently linked to the slab's rim by a domain wall, appears when the angular velocity, Ω, is parallel to l.