0000000000133981

AUTHOR

Carlo F. Barenghi

Large-scale normal fluid circulation in helium superflows

We perform fully-coupled numerical simulations of helium II pure superflows in a channel, with vortex- line density typical of experiments. Peculiar to our model is the computation of the back-reaction of the superfluid vortex motion on the normal fluid and the presence of solid boundaries. We recover the uniform vortex-line density experimentally measured employing second sound resonators and we show that pure superflow in helium II is associated with a large-scale circulation of the normal fluid which can be detected using existing particle-tracking visualization techniques.

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Coupled normal fluid and superfluid profiles of turbulent helium II in channels

We perform fully coupled two--dimensional numerical simulations of plane channel helium II counterflows with vortex--line density typical of experiments. The main features of our approach are the inclusion of the back reaction of the superfluid vortices on the normal fluid and the presence of solid boundaries. Despite the reduced dimensionality, our model is realistic enough to reproduce vortex density distributions across the channel recently calculated in three--dimensions. We focus on the coarse--grained superfluid and normal fluid velocity profiles, recovering the normal fluid profile recently observed employing a technique based on laser--induced fluorescence of metastable helium molec…

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Turbulent Superfluid Profiles in a Counterflow Channel

We have developed a two-dimensional model of quantised vortices in helium II moving under the influence of applied normal fluid and superfluid in a counterflow channel. We predict superfluid and vortex-line density profiles which could be experimentally tested using recently developed visualization techniques.

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Classical and quantum vortex leapfrogging in two-dimensional channels

The leapfrogging of coaxial vortex rings is a famous effect which has been noticed since the times of Helmholtz. Recent advances in ultra-cold atomic gases show that the effect can now be studied in quantum fluids. The strong confinement which characterizes these systems motivates the study of leapfrogging of vortices within narrow channels. Using the two-dimensional point vortex model, we show that in the constrained geometry of a two-dimensional channel the dynamics is richer than in an unbounded domain: alongsize the known regimes of standard leapfrogging and the absence of it, we identify new regimes of backward leapfrogging and periodic orbits. Moreover, by solving the Gross-Pitaevskii…

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Vortex length, vortex energy and fractal dimension of superfluid turbulence at very low temperature

By assuming a self-similar structure for Kelvin waves along vortex loops with successive smaller scale features, we model the fractal dimension of a superfluid vortex tangle in the zero temperature limit. Our model assumes that at each step the total energy of the vortices is conserved, but the total length can change. We obtain a relation between the fractal dimension and the exponent describing how the vortex energy per unit length changes with the length scale. This relation does not depend on the specific model, and shows that if smaller length scales make a decreasing relative contribution to the energy per unit length of vortex lines, the fractal dimension will be higher than unity. F…

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The saturation of decaying counterflow turbulence in helium II

We are concerned with the problem of the decay of a tangle of quantized vortices in He II generated by a heat current. Direct application of Vinen's equation yields the temporal scaling of vortex line density $L \sim t^{-1}$. Schwarz and Rozen [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 66}, 1898 (1991); Phys. Rev. B {\bf 44}, 7563 (1991)] observed a faster decay followed by a slower decay. More recently, Skrbek and collaborators [Phys. Rev. E {\bf 67}, 047302 (2003)] found an initial transient followed by the same classical $t^{-3/2}$ scaling observed in the decay of grid-generated turbulence. We present a simple theoretical model which, we argue, contains the essential physical ingredients, and accounts for t…

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