Cavitation of electron bubbles in liquid parahydrogen

Abstract

Within a finite-temperature density functional approach, we have investigated the structure of electron bubbles in liquid parahydrogen below the saturated vapour pressure, determining the critical pressure at which electron bubbles explode as a function of temperature. The electron-parahydrogen interaction has been modelled by a Hartree-type local potential fitted to the experimental value of the conduction band-edge for a delocalized electron in pH(2). We have found that the pressure for bubble explosion is, in absolute value, about a factor of two smaller than that of the homogeneous cavitation pressure in the liquid. Comparison with the results obtained within the capillary model shows the limitations of this approximation, especially as temperature increases

A Density Functional Approach to Para-hydrogen at Zero Temperature

“…We think that this agreement is especially remarkable because no information on these clusters, whose surface to volume ratio is large, has been incorporated in the fit of the DF parameters. The proposed functional is an extension to T = 0 of the one at finite temperatures that we have proposed in a previous work [36] and was used to study the properties of pH 2 along the liquid-vapor coexistence line, as well as homogeneous and heterogeneous cavitation in the metastable liquid [37,38]. The finite temperature DF has also been used for studying pH 2 adsorbed on curved surfaces [40] and the wetting properties of pH 2 on planar Rb surfaces, yielding results in satisfactory agreement with experiments and microscopic calculations.…”

“…The functional was proven to accurately describe the T -dependent surface tension and width of the liquid-vapor interface and has been used to study some phenomena in liquid pH 2 , such as homogeneous nucleation and cavitation [37], and cavitation of electron bubbles [38]. We mention that a finite temperature functional for pH 2 was also proposed in Ref.…”