Fission of multielectron bubbles in liquid helium

Abstract

The stability of multielectron bubbles (MEBs) in liquid helium is investigated using the liquid-drop model for fissioning nuclei. Whereas a critical positive pressure can make the bubble unstable against fissioning, a small negative pressure suffices to introduce a restoring force preventing any small deformation of the bubble to grow. We also find that there exists an energy barrier making MEBs metastable against fissioning at zero pressure. The results obtained here overcome the difficulties associated with the Rayleigh-Plesset equation previously used to study bubble stability, and shed new light on the limits of achievable bubble geometries in recently proposed experiments devised to stabilize MEBs.

11 pages and 5 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. B

References in corpus (2)

• The effect of pressure on statics, dynamics and stability of multielectron bubbles
• Hexatic Order and Surface Ripples in Spherical Geometries

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• On the cavity evolution and the Rayleigh--Plesset equation in superfluid helium
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• Fragmentation Temperature of 1D and 3D Quantum Droplets in a BEC Mixture