Confinement Potential Inside Rare Gas Plated MCM-41 Nanopores*

Motivated by recent experimental and simulation results reporting on the use of rare gas pre-plated nanoporous materials to explore one dimensional superfluidity, we describe an approach towards constructing a microscopically accurate description of the confinement potential in these systems. By combining grand canonical Monte Carlo adsorption isotherms with molecular dynamics simulations and experimental results, we can resolve atomic-scale detail of the energetic environment inside MCM-41 crystals. The results support a previous conjecture that the adsorption of a rare gas monolayer can screen imperfections and roughness near the pore walls and yield a smooth confinement potential that can be incorporated into more costly quantum simulations of low-dimensional superfluids.