Manifestations of Local Supersolidity of $^{4}$He around a Charged Molecular Impurity

Fabien Brieuc; Christoph Schran; Dominik Marx

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arXiv · 2011.07930

Manifestations of Local Supersolidity of $^{4}$He around a Charged Molecular Impurity

Fabien Brieuc·Christoph Schran·Dominik Marx

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Abstract

A frozen, solid helium core, dubbed snowball, is typically observed around cations in liquid helium. Here we discover, using path integral simulations, that around a cationic molecular impurity, protonated methane, the $^4$He atoms are indeed strongly localized akin to snowballs but still participate in vivid bosonic exchange induced by the ro-vibrational motion of the impurity. Such combination of solid-like order with pronounced superfluid response in the first helium shell indicates that manifestations of local supersolid behavior of $^4$He can be induced -- and probed experimentally -- by charged molecules.

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Fabien Brieuc, Christoph Schran, Dominik Marx. 2020-11-16. Manifestations of Local Supersolidity of $^{4}$He around a Charged Molecular Impurity. https://arxiv.org/abs/2011.07930

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