Shape fluctuations and optical transition of He2* excimer tracers in superfluid He4

Abstract

Metastable ${\mathrm{He}}_{2}^{*}$ excimer molecules have been utilized as tracer particles of the normal component in superfluid $^{4}\mathrm{He}$ (He II) which can be imaged via laser-induced fluorescence. These excimer molecules form tiny bubbles in He II and can bind to quantized vortices at sufficiently low temperatures, thereby allowing for direct visualization of vortex dynamics in an inviscid superfluid. However, the ${a}^{3}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}}_{u}^{+}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{c}^{3}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}}_{g}^{+}$ optical absorption line, which is responsible for the fluorescence imaging of the ${\mathrm{He}}_{2}^{*}$ molecules, is controlled by fluctuations on the bubble shape, and its exact line profile is not known at low temperatures. In this paper, we present a bubble model for evaluating the surface fluctuation eigenmodes of the excimers in He II. The line profile of the ${a}^{3}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}}_{u}^{+}\ensuremath{\rightarrow}{c}^{3}{\mathrm{\ensuremath{\Sigma}}}_{g}^{+}$ transition is calculated at different temperatures by considering both the zero-point and thermal fluctuations on the bubble shape. We show that as the temperature drops from 2 K to 20 mK, the peak absorption strength is enhanced by a factor of about five, accompanying a blueshift of the peak location by about 2 nm. A double-peak line profile due to the rotational levels of the molecular core can be resolved. This bubble model also allows us to evaluate the stiffness of the ${\mathrm{He}}_{2}^{*}$ bubbles and hence their diffusion constant in He II due to scattering off thermal phonons. Our results will aid the design of future experiments on imaging quantized vortices in He II using ${\mathrm{He}}_{2}^{*}$ tracers.