Article
Author: Ulmer, Anatoli ; Heilrath, Andrea ; Senfftleben, Bjoern ; O'Connell-Lopez, Sean M. O. ; Kruse, Bjoern ; Seiffert, Lennart ; Kolatzki, Katharina ; Langbehn, Bruno ; Hoffmann, Andreas ; Baumann, Thomas M. ; Boll, Rebecca ; Chatterley, Adam S. ; De Fanis, Alberto ; Erk, Benjamin ; Erukala, Swetha ; Feinberg, Alexandra J. ; Fennel, Thomas ; Grychtol, Patrik ; Hartmann, Robert ; Ilchen, Markus ; Izquierdo, Manuel ; Krebs, Bennet ; Kuster, Markus ; Mazza, Tommaso ; Montano, Jacobo ; Noffz, Georg ; Rivas, Daniel E. ; Schlosser, Dieter ; Seel, Fabian ; Stapelfeldt, Henrik ; Strueder, Lothar ; Tiggesbaeumker, Josef ; Yousef, Hazem ; Zabel, Michael ; Ziolkowski, Pawel ; Meyer, Michael ; Ovcharenko, Yevheniy ; Vilesov, Andrey F. ; Moeller, Thomas ; Rupp, Daniela ; Tanyag, Rico Mayro P.
Superfluid helium nanodroplets are an ideal environment for the formation of metastable, self-organized dopant nanostructures. However, the presence of vortices often hinders their formation. Here, we demonstrate the generation of vortex-free helium nanodroplets and explore the size range in which they can be produced. From x-ray diffraction images of xenon-doped droplets, we identify that single compact structures, assigned to vortex-free aggregation, prevail up to 10^{8} atoms per droplet. This finding builds the basis for exploring the assembly of far-from-equilibrium nanostructures at low temperatures.