A superfluid hydrodynamic model for the enhanced moments of inertia of molecules in liquid 4He

Abstract

We present a superfluid hydrodynamic model for the increase in moment of inertia, $ΔI$, of molecules rotating in liquid $^4$He. The static inhomogeneous He density around each molecule (calculated using the Orsay-Paris liquid $^4$He density functional) is assumed to adiabatically follow the rotation of the molecule. We find that the $ΔI$ values created by the viscousless and irrotational flow are in good agreement with the observed increases for several molecules [ OCS, (HCN)$_2$, HCCCN, and HCCCH$_3$ ]. For HCN and HCCH, our model substantially overestimates $ΔI$. This is likely to result from a (partial) breakdown of the adiabatic following approximation.