Bosonic helium droplets with cationic impurities: onset of electrostriction and snowball effects from quantum calculations

Variational Monte Carlo and diffusion Monte Carlo calculations have been carried out for cations such as Li(+), Na(+), and K(+) as dopants of small helium clusters over a range of cluster sizes up to about 12 solvent atoms. The interaction has been modeled through a sum-of-potential picture that dis