Quasiparticle approach to molecules interacting with quantum solvents

Abstract

Understanding the behavior of molecules interacting with superfluid helium represents a formidable challenge and, in general, requires approaches relying on large-scale numerical simulations. Here we demonstrate that experimental data collected over the last 20 years provide evidence that molecules immersed in superfluid helium form recently-predicted angulon quasiparticles [Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 203001 (2015)]. Most importantly, casting the many-body problem in terms of angulons amounts to a drastic simplification and yields effective molecular moments of inertia as straightforward analytic solutions of a simple microscopic Hamiltonian. The outcome of the angulon theory is in good agreement with experiment for a broad range of molecular impurities, from heavy to medium-mass to light species. These results pave the way to understanding molecular rotation in liquid and crystalline phases in terms of the angulon quasiparticle.