arXiv:cond-mat/9511100 · Physical Review Letters
Surface Region of Superfluid Helium as an Inhomogeneous Bose-Condensed Gas
Adam Griffin, S. Stringari
Abstract
We present arguments that the low density surface region of self-bounded superfluid ${}^{4}\mathrm{He}$ systems is an inhomogeneous dilute Bose gas, with almost all of the atoms occupying the same single-particle state at $T\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}=\phantom{\rule{0ex}{0ex}}0$. Numerical evidence for this complete Bose-Einstein condensation was first given by the many-body variational calculations of ${}^{4}\mathrm{He}$ droplets by Lewart, Pandharipande, and Pieper in 1988 [Phys. Rev. B 37, 4950 (1988)]. We show that the low density surface region can be treated rigorously using a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the Bose order parameter.