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Collapse of Vapor-Filled Multielectron Bubbles Held Against a Surface

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Abstract

Multielectron bubbles (MEBs) are cavities in liquid helium containing a layer of electrons pinned to the inner surface of the bubbles. Previous experimental work carried out with MEBs in bulk helium-4 above the lambda point showed MEBs can contain vapor, which condenses in a time approximately proportional to the volume of the bubble, and this observation was further confirmed by numerical simulations. In the present work, we describe experiments where the MEBs are held against a solid substrate. We found the rate of vapor condensation and therefore the speed of collapse of the bubble to be orders of magnitude faster compared to MEBs in bulk. We discuss a numerical model and the associated difficulties to explain this difference.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported in part by MHRD, Government of India under Grant No. SPARC-1236. We thank DST for supporting the research and INSPIRE for providing financial support to one of the authors. We thank MHRD, MeitY, and DST for supporting the facilities at CeNSE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    P. K. Rath & A. Ghosh

  2. Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India

    Y. Huang & A. Ghosh

Authors
  1. P. K. Rath
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  2. Y. Huang
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  3. A. Ghosh
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Correspondence to Y. Huang.

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Rath, P.K., Huang, Y. & Ghosh, A. Collapse of Vapor-Filled Multielectron Bubbles Held Against a Surface. J Low Temp Phys 201, 106–113 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-020-02345-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-020-02345-1

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