Stability of Electronic Bubbles in Liquid Neon and Hydrogen

Abstract

A calculation is performed for the ground-state energies of electronic bubbles in liquid neon and hydrogen as a function of temperature, with the use of (a range of) experimentally determined electron scattering cross sections. It is concluded that bubbles can exist in liquid hydrogen and possibly also in liquid neon at elevated temperatures. Maximum stability would be achieved at about 40°K, but experimental scattering data for Ne are still too uncertain to allow a definite prediction. Electronic bubbles in hydrogen are predicted to contain bound excited states, and excitation energies are computed. Comparison is made with an earlier treatment for liquid neon and hydrogen near their melting points, based on a different approach to polarization effects, and significant errors in that work are corrected.