Libration of Strongly‐Oriented Polar Molecules inside a Superfluid

Abstract

We study a polar molecule immersed in a superfluid environment, such as a helium nanodroplet or a Bose-Einstein condensate, in the presence of a strong electrostatic field. We show that coupling of the molecular pendular motion, induced by the field, to the fluctuating bath leads to formation of pendulons-spherical harmonic librators dressed by a field of many-particle excitations. We study the behavior of the pendulon in a broad range of molecule-bath and molecule-field interaction strengths, and reveal that its spectrum features a series of instabilities which are absent in the field-free case of the angulon quasiparticle. Furthermore, we show that an external field allows to fine-tune the positions of these instabilities in the molecular rotational spectrum. This opens the door to detailed experimental studies of redistribution of orbital angular momentum in many-particle systems.