Cavitation of Electron Bubbles in Liquid Helium Below Saturation Pressure

Abstract

We have used a Hartree–type electron–helium (e–He) potential together with a density functional description of liquid 4He and 3He to study the explosion of electron bubbles submitted to a negative pressure. The critical pressure at which bubbles explode has been determined as a function of temperature. It has been found that this critical pressure is very close to the pressure at which liquid helium becomes globally unstable in the presence of electrons. It is shown that at high temperatures the capillary model overestimates the critical pressures. We have checked that a commonly used and rather simple e-He interaction yields results very similar to those obtained using the more accurate Hartree-type interaction. We have estimated that the crossover temperature for thermal to quantum nucleation of electron bubbles is very low, of the order of 6 mK for 4He.