Electron bubbles and light

The splitting of electron bubbles into a pair of electrino bubbles has been proposed to explain the increased photoconductivity of liquid helium upon light illumination. The new explanation given here is that light induced electron bubbles are produced by the ionization of impurities in the liquid helium. But the visible (VIS) light in photoconductivity experiments lacks the Planck energy to reach the vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) levels necessary for impurity ionization, and therefore a mechanism initiated by VIS light that produces VUV light needs to be identified. To this end, a cavity quantum electrodynamics (QED) induced photoelectric mechanism is proposed that implicitly assumes the liquid helium contains both coarse and fine size impurities. Rapid thermal expansion of coarse impurities upon absorption of IR-VIS light causes the separation of liquid helium from the surface of the impurity, the separation nucleating a bubble containing the impurity. Prior to separation, each atom in the impurity emits 3 /spl times/ 1/2 kT of thermal energy as far infrared (IR) radiation. But at the instant of separation, the IR radiation from the impurity is momentarily suppressed by cavity QED because the bubble has a high electromagnetic (EM) resonant frequency. To conserve energy, the suppressed IR radiation is promptly released as coherent multi-IR photons that combine to VUV levels at the bubble surface. Fine impurities in the bubble surface are ionized by the VUV light and produce electrons by the photoelectric effect, the electrons promptly localizing to form the light induced electron bubbles that yield the increased photoconductivity.