Dynamics of liquid He-4 in confined geometries from Time-Dependent Density Functional calculations

TL;DR

This paper uses Time-Dependent Density Functional theory to simulate the real-time dynamics of liquid helium-4 in various confined geometries, providing detailed insights into its behavior in complex environments.

Contribution

It introduces a 3-D numerical approach for simulating liquid He-4 dynamics without symmetry assumptions, applicable to diverse confined systems.

Findings

Detailed density profiles and velocity fields of He-4 in different geometries

Insights into the behavior of alkali-doped clusters and monolayer films

Understanding of nano-droplet spreading on surfaces

Abstract

We present numerical results obtained from Time-Dependent Density Functional calculations of the dynamics of liquid He-4 in different environments characterized by geometrical confinement. The time-dependent density profile and velocity field of He-4 are obtained by means of direct numerical integration of the non-linear Schrodinger equation associated with a phenomenological energy functional which describes accurately both the static and dynamic properties of bulk liquid He-4. Our implementation allows for a general solution in 3-D (i.e. no symmetries are assumed in order to simplify the calculations). We apply our method to study the real-time dynamics of pure and alkali-doped clusters, of a monolayer film on a weakly attractive surface and a nano-droplet spreading on a solid surface.