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 in:Physical review letters 2019-10, Vol.123 (16), p.165301-165301, Article 165301
Main Authors: Laimer, Felix, Kranabetter, Lorenz, Tiefenthaler, Lukas, Albertini, Simon, Zappa, Fabio, Ellis, Andrew M, Gatchell, Michael, Scheier, Paul
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Atomic properties
Droplets
Explosions
Fluids
Helium
Liquid helium
Neutral beams
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 the charge state. We show that the droplets are stable on the millisecond timescale of the experiment and decay through the loss of small charged clusters, not through symmetric Coulomb explosions.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/PhysRevLett.123.165301