Experimental and theoretical study of the radial density distributions of large 3He droplets

The integral cross sections of large 3He droplets and the number of atoms in the corresponding droplets (N-bar=2x103-2x104 atoms) have been measured in molecular-beam scattering experiments. The experimental results are in very good agreement with integral cross sections calculated from the radial density distributions predicted from density-functional theory calculations. The experimentally confirmed theoretical 10-90% surface thicknesses vary between 8.0 A (N-bar=103) and 7.6 A (N-bar=4x104) and are about 30% larger than calculated for 4He droplets of similar sizes