Spinning "snowballs" in superfluid 4He

Mesoscopic molecular ions in Bose-Einstein condensates

We study the possible formation of large (mesoscopic) molecular ions in an ultracold degenerate bosonic gas doped with charged particles (ions). We show that the polarization potentials produced by the ionic impurities are capable of capturing hundreds of atoms into loosely bound states. We describe the spontaneous formation of these hollow molecular ions via phonon emission and suggest an optical technique for coherent stimulated transitions of condensate atoms into a specific bound state. These results open up new possibilities for manipulating tightly confined ensembles.

Calculation of hydrodynamic mass for atomic impurities in helium

We present a simple numerical procedure for calculating the irrotational hydrodynamic flow around a spherical solute in superfluid helium. The results for alkali cations are compared to recent many-body variational Monte Carlo (VMC) calculations. The helium contribution to the effective masses calculated by the VMC and hydrodynamic methods are 12.9(4.6) versus 9.4 u for Li+, 48.2(5.6) versus 52.1 u for Na+, 69.6(4.8) versus 70.1 u for K+, and 6.4(8.8) versus 6.8 for Cs+. In all cases, the agreement of the two results are in within the error estimate of the VMC calculation, demonstrating the accuracy of hydrodynamic treatment of helium motion even on the atomic length scale.