Transport phenomena in anisotropic porous media are widely discussed in the literature. We investigate the Knudsen regime diffusion in alumina aerogels~---~high porosity materials composed of long cylindrical strands. The theory and experimental results for nematic aerogel with nearly parallel strands were reported earlier [1].

In the present paper we explore a different type of anisotropic aerogel-like metamaterial, which we call the planar aerogel. Like nematic aerogel, it is a macroscopically uniform system with axial symmetry which consists of strands of diameter $10\,\text{nm}$. The directions of these strands, however, are uniformly distributed in a plane perpendicular to the symmetry axis (rather than parallel to it, as in nematic aerogel). Proposed theory is based on the assumption that elastic collisions with the strands is the most important scattering mechanism. We consider two opposite limits: specular and diffuse scattering (denoted by the subscripts $S$ and $D$). Axially symmetric diffusion tensor has two distinct principal values: $D^{xx}=D^{yy}$ for diffusion in the aerogel plane and $D^{zz}$ along the symmetry axis. From the theory it follows, somewhat surprisingly, that the diffusion anisotropy in the specular scattering model is smaller than that in the diffuse model: $D^{xx}_\text{S}/D^{zz}_\text{S}=1.97$ and $D^{xx}_\text{D}/D^{zz}_\text{D}=2.50$.

In the experiments we used the spin echo technique to investigate the spin diffusion in normal liquid $^3$He confined in the planar aerogel. At very low temperatures $T\sim 1\,\text{mK}$, where the Fermi quasiparticle population is small and the Knudsen regime is achieved, our experimental results are in a good agreement with the theory for the case of the specular scattering.