Flow-induced pinning and unpinning of vortices have been investigated exper
imentally in superfluid He-4 at temperatures varying from 14 to 44 mK. The
lifetime and unpinning velocities of pinned vortices could be measured by f
ollowing the apparent changes of the critical velocity for phase slips. The
pinned vortex size and location can be deduced from the magnitude of these
changes and are found, in these experiments, to be of nanometer size. The
experimental observations indicate that unpinning takes place by quantum tu
nnelling and provide information on the phenomenon of superflow collapse in
pinholes. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.