Spinning superfluid He 4 nanodroplets

We have studied spinning superfluid He4 nanodroplets at zero temperature using density functional theory. Due to the irrotational character of the superfluid flow, the shapes of the spinning nanodroplets are very different from those of a viscous normal fluid drop in steady rotation. We show that when vortices are nucleated inside the superfluid droplets, their morphology, which evolves from axisymmetric oblate to triaxial prolate to two-lobed shapes, is in good agreement with experiments. The presence of vortex arrays confers to the superfluid droplets the rigid-body behavior of a normal fluid in steady rotation, and this is the ultimate reason for the surprising good agreement between recent experiments and the classical models used for their description.