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Highly Charged Droplets of Superfluid Helium
Felix Laimer1, Lorenz Kranabetter1, Lukas Tiefenthaler1
1Institut für Ionenphysik und Angewandte Physik, Universität Innsbruck, Technikerstr. 25, A-6020 Innsbruck, Austria.
Physical Review Letters
|November 9, 2019
Summary
Researchers created stable, highly charged superfluid helium nanodroplets. These droplets, containing millions of atoms, are stable and decay by losing charged clusters, not exploding.
Area of Science:
- Condensed matter physics
- Atomic and molecular physics
- Low-temperature physics
Background:
- Superfluid helium nanodroplets are unique quantum systems.
- Understanding droplet stability under high charge states is crucial.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the production and stability of highly charged superfluid helium nanodroplets.
- To determine the decay mechanisms of these charged droplets.
Main Methods:
- Utilizing a novel experimental setup for droplet ionization and mass-per-charge selection.
- Producing neutral beams of liquid helium nanodroplets with millions of atoms.
- Performing double ionization and subsequent analysis of droplet charge states.
Main Results:
- Successfully produced and identified stable, highly charged helium nanodroplets with up to 55 net positive charges.
- Determined the appearance sizes of multiply charged droplets as a function of charge state.
- Observed droplet stability on a millisecond timescale.
Conclusions:
- The experimental setup enables the study of highly charged nanodroplets.
- Droplet decay occurs via the loss of small charged clusters, not symmetric Coulomb explosions.
- These findings provide insights into the behavior of charged quantum systems.
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