From nonwetting to prewetting: the asymptotic behavior of 4He drops on alkali substrates

Abstract

We investigate the spreading of 4He droplets on alkali surfaces at zero temperature, within the frame of Finite Range Density Functional theory. The equilibrium configurations of several 4He_N clusters and their asymptotic trend with increasing particle number N, which can be traced to the wetting behavior of the quantum fluid, are examined for nanoscopic droplets. We discuss the size effects, inferring that the asymptotic properties of large droplets correspond to those of the prewetting film.

References in corpus (4)

• Structural and dynamical properties of superfluid helium: a density functional approach
• Wetting transitions of He4 on alkali metal surfaces from density functional calculations
• Quantized vortices in mixed 3He-4He drops
• Bound states of 3He at the edge of a 4He drop on a cesium surface

Cited by in corpus (8)

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• Evolution of the excited electron bubble in liquid 4He and the appearance of fission-like processes
• Condensation of helium in nanoscopic alkali wedges at zero temperature
• Finite size effects in adsorption of helium mixtures by alkali substrates
• Bose-Fermi Mixtures in Optical Lattices
• Critical frequency for vortex nucleation in Bose-Fermi mixtures in optical lattices