Highly charged droplets of superfluid helium

We report on the production and study of stable, highly charged droplets of superfluid helium. Using a novel experimental setup we produce neutral beams of liquid helium nanodroplets containing millions of atoms or more that can be ionized by electron impact, mass-per-charge selected, and ionized a...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inarXiv.org
Main Authors Laimer, Felix, Lorenz Kranabetter, Tiefenthaler, Lukas, Albertini, Simon, Zappa, Fabio, Ellis, Andrew M, Gatchell, Michael, Scheier, Paul
Format Paper Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Ithaca Cornell University Library, arXiv.org 03.12.2019
Subjects
Atomic properties
Droplets
Explosions
Fluids
Helium
Liquid helium
Neutral beams
Physics - Atomic and Molecular Clusters
Physics - Chemical Physics
Physics - Fluid Dynamics
Physics - Other Condensed Matter
Superfluidity
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Summary:We report on the production and study of stable, highly charged droplets of superfluid helium. Using a novel experimental setup we produce neutral beams of liquid helium nanodroplets containing millions of atoms or more that can be ionized by electron impact, mass-per-charge selected, and ionized a second time before being analyzed. Droplets containing up to 55 net positive charges are identified and the appearance sizes of multiply charge droplets are determined as a function of charge state. We show that the droplets are stable on the millisecond time scale of the experiment and decay through the loss of small charged clusters, not through symmetric Coulomb explosions.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.1912.01337