Transitional Supersolidity in Ion Doped Helium Droplets
^{4}He nanodroplets doped with an alkali ion feature a snowball of crystallized layers surrounded by superfluid helium. For large droplets, we predict that a transitional supersolid layer can form, bridging between the solid core and the liquid bulk, where the ^{4}He density displays modulations of icosahedral group symmetry. To identify the different phases, we combine density functional theory with the semiclassical Gaussian time-dependent Hartree method for localized many-body systems. This hybrid approach can handle large particle numbers and provides insight into the physical origin of the supersolid layer. For small droplets, we verify that the predictions of our approach are in excellent agreement with Path-Integral Monte Carlo calculations.
Authors
- Matteo Ciardi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8503-7416)
- Jan M. Rost (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8306-1743)
- Thomas Pohl (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4093-3644)
- Juan Carlos Acosta Matos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7927-3292)
- P. Giannakeas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1164-0201)
Institutions
- TU Wien (AT)
- Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems (DE)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Physical Review Letters
- Published
- 2025-05-09
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.134.186001
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.49
Funders
- European Commission
- Austrian Science Fund
- European Research Council