Search results for "superfluid helium"
showing 10 items of 46 documents
HEAT FLUX IN SUPERFLUID TRANSITION AND IN TURBULENT HELIUM COUNTERFLOW
Efficient numerical method for simulating static and dynamic properties of superfluid helium
2004
Density functional theory (DFT) offers computationally affordable way of describing static and dynamic properties of superfluid 4He. In general, the DFT models yield single particle-like Schrodinger equations with a nonlinear potential term that accounts for all the many-body interactions. The resulting equations can be solved for small amplitude plane wave excitations in the bulk whereas fully numerical solution must be sought in more complicated cases. In this paper we propose a numerical method that can be used in solving the time-dependent nonlinear Schrodinger equation in both real and imaginary times. The method is based on operator splitting technique where each component operator is…
Large-scale normal fluid circulation in helium superflows
2017
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.
Alternative Vinen equation and its extension to rotating counterflow superfluid turbulence
2007
Two alternative Vinen's evolution equations for the vortex line density L in counterflow superfluid turbulence, are physically admissible and lead to analogous results in steady states. In Phys. Rev. B, 69, 094513 (2004) the most used of them was generalized to counterflow superfluid turbulence in rotating containers. Here, the analogous generalization for the alternative Vinen's equation is proposed. Both generalized Vinen's equations are compared with the experimental results, not only in steady-states but also in some unsteady situations. From this analysis follows that the solutions of the alternative Vinen's equation tend significantly faster to the corresponding final steady state val…
Refrigeration of an Array of Cylindrical Nanosystems by Flowing Superfluid Helium
2016
We consider the refrigeration of an array of heat-dissipating cylindrical nanosystems as a simplified model of computer refrigeration. We explore the use of He II as cooling fluid, taking into account forced convection and heat conduction. The main conceptual and practical difficulties arise in the calculation of the effective thermal conductivity. Since He II does not follow Fourier’s law, the effective geometry-dependent conductivity must be extracted from a more general equation for heat transfer. Furthermore, we impose the restrictions that the maximum temperature along the array should be less than (Formula presented.) transition temperature and that quantum turbulence is avoided, in o…
Contribution of the normal component to the thermal resistance of turbulent liquid helium
2015
Previous results for the velocity profile of the normal component of helium II in counterflow are used to evaluate the viscous contribution to the effective thermal resistance. It turns out that such a contribution becomes considerably higher than the usual Landau estimate, because in the presence of vortices, the velocity profile is appreciably different from the Poiseuille parabolic profile. Thus, a marked increase in the contribution of the normal component to the thermal resistance with respect to the viscous Landau estimate does not necessarily imply that the normal component is turbulent. Furthermore, we examine the influence of a possible slip flow along the walls when the radius of …
Sub-MeV dark matter and the Goldstone modes of superfluid helium
2019
We show how the relativistic effective field theory for the superfluid phase of helium-4 can replace the standard methods used to compute the production rates of low momentum excitations due to the interaction with an external probe. This is done by studying the scattering problem of a light dark matter particle in the superfluid, and comparing to some existing results. We show that the rate of emission of two phonons, the Goldstone modes of the effective theory, gets strongly suppressed for sub-MeV dark matter particles due to a fine cancellation between two different tree-level diagrams in the limit of small exchanged momenta. This phenomenon is found to be a consequence of the particular…
Second sound near lambda transition in presence of quantum vortices
2018
In this paper, temperature waves (also known as second sound) are consid- ered, with their respective coupling with waves in the order parameter describing the transition from normal phase to superfluid phase, and with waves in the vortex length density. We analyze the coupling between these three kinds of waves and explore its relevance in situations not far from the lambda transition. In particular, the expres- sions for the second sound speed and second sound attenuation are explicitly obtained within some approximations, showing the influence of the order parameter and the vortex length density, which is decisive close to the transition.
Coupling of heat flux and vortex polarization in superfluid helium
2020
We consider a macroscopic description of the mutual influence between heat flux and vortex polarization in superfluid helium, in which the vortices produce a lateral deviation of the heat flux, and the heat flux produces a lateral drift of vortices. This coupling is a consequence of a microscopic Magnus force and mutual friction force between the vortices and the flow of excitations carrying the heat. We keep track of these effects with simplified macroscopic equations, and we apply them to second sound propagation between rotating concentric cylinders and to spatial distribution of polarization across a rectangular channel with vortices polarized orthogonally to the channel in the presence…
Effective thermal conductivity of superuid helium: Laminar, turbulent and ballistic regimes
2016
Abstract In this paper we extend previous results on the effective thermal conductivity of liquid helium II in cylindrical channels to rectangular channels with high aspect ratio. The aim is to compare the results in the laminar regime, the turbulent regime and the ballistic regime, all of them obtained within a single mesoscopic formalism of heat transport, with heat flux as an independent variable.