We study the statistical properties of coherent, small-scales, filamentary-like structures in Turbulence. In order to follow in time such complex spatial structures, we integrate Lagrangian and Eulerian measurements by seeding the flow with light particles. We show that light particles preferentially concentrate in small filamentary regions of high persistent vorticity (vortex filaments). We measure the fractal dimension of the attracting set and the probability that two particles do not separate for long time lapses. We fortify the signal-to-noise ratio by exploiting multi-particles correlations on the dynamics of bunches of particles. In doing that, we are able to give a first quantitative estimation of the vortex-filaments life-times, showing the presence of events as long as the integral correlation time. The same technique introduced here could be used in experiments as long as one is capable to track clouds of bubbles in turbulence for a relatively long period of time, at high Reynolds numbers; shading light on the dynamics of small-scale vorticity in realistic turbulent flows.
We present a fluid dynamics video showing how a point vortex interacts with a passive flexible filament, for various values of filament bending stiffness.
In recognition of the highly non-trivial task of computation of the inverse Hasimoto transformation mapping the intrinsic geometric parameter space onto the extrinsic vortex filament coordinate space a reformulation of the Da Rios-Betchov equations in the latter space is given. The nonlinear localized vortex filament structure solution given by the present formulation is in detailed agreement with the Betchov-Hasimoto solution in the small-amplitude limit and is also in qualitative agreement with laboratory experiment observations of helical-twist solitary waves propagating on concentrated vor…
This fluid dynamics video demonstrates the merger of long vortex filaments is shown experimentally. Two counter-rotating vortices are generated using in a tank with very high aspect ratio. PIV demonstrates the merger of the vortices within a single orbit.
The title of this paper echoes the title of a paragraph in the famous book by Frisch on classical turbulence. In the relevant chapter, the author discusses the role of the statistical dynamics of vortex filaments in the fascinating problem of turbulence and the possibility of a breakthrough in constructing an advanced theory. This aspect arose due to the large amount of evidence, both experimental and numerical, that the vorticity field in turbulent flows has a pronounced filamentary structure. In fact, there is unquestionably a strong relationship between the dynamics of chaotic vortex filame…
We suggest a simple explanation of the difference between transverse and longitudinal scaling exponents observed in experiments and simulations. Based on the Vortex filament model and Multifractal conjecture, we calculate both scaling exponents for any n without any fitting parameters and ESS anzatz. The results are in very good agreement with the data of simulations.
A vortex filament immersed in a non-ideal fluid, thanks to viscous diffusion, experiences a slipping motion with respect to the fluid. In recognition of this, in this paper, the effect of this slipping motion on the Hasimoto soliton propagating on a vortex filament is investigated, and an exact solution is given to describe this process. A strong slipping motion is shown to prevent the existence of the Hasimoto soliton. The critical slipping speed (above which the Hasimoto soliton fails to exist) is shown to be equal to the torsion.
Kinetic helicity is one of the invariants of the Euler equations that is associated with the topology of vortex lines within the fluid. In superfluids, the vorticity is concentrated along vortex filaments. In this setting, helicity would be expected to acquire its simplest form. However, the lack of a core structure for vortex filaments appears to result in a helicity that does not retain its key attribute as a quadratic invariant. By defining a spanwise vector to the vortex through the use of a Seifert framing, we are able to introduce twist and henceforth recover the key properties of helici…
Kelvin wave and soliton propagation in classical viscous vortex filaments
Université Côte d’Azur（蔚蓝海岸大学）；Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange（蔚蓝海岸天文台，法国国家科学研究中心，拉格朗日实验室）；Université Côte d’Azur, CNRS, Institut de Physique de Nice (INPHYNI)（蔚蓝海岸大学，法国国家科学研究中心，尼斯物理研究所）
The energy spectrum of the 3D velocity field, induced by collapsing vortex filaments is studied. One of the aims of this work is to clarify the appearance of the Kolmogorov type energy spectrum $E(k)\varpropto k^{-5/3}$, observed in many numerical works on discrete vortex tubes (quantized vortex filaments in quantum fluids). Usually, explaining classical turbulent properties of quantum turbulence, the model of vortex bundles, is used. This model is necessary to mimic the vortex stretching, which is responsible for the energy transfer in classical turbulence. In our consideration we do not appe…
We consider solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations in $3d$ with vortex filament initial data of arbitrary circulation, that is, initial vorticity given by a divergence-free vector-valued measure of arbitrary mass supported on a smooth curve. First, we prove global well-posedness for perturbations of the Oseen vortex column in scaling-critical spaces. Second, we prove local well-posedness (in a sense to be made precise) when the filament is a smooth, closed, non-self-intersecting curve. Besides their physical interest, these results are the first to give well-posedness in a neighborhood of la…
The development and decay of a turbulent vortex tangle driven by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation is studied. Using a recently-developed accurate and robust tracking algorithm, all quantised vortices are extracted from the fields. The Vinen's decay law for the total vortex length with a coefficient that is in quantitative agreement with the values measured in Helium II is observed. The topology of the tangle is then studied showing that linked rings may appear during the decay. The tracking also allows for determining the statistics of small-scales quantities of vortex lines, exhibiting large flu…
The Hasimoto transformation between the classical LIA (local induction approximation, a model approximating the motion of a thin vortex filament) and the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) has proven very useful in the past, since it allows one to construct new solutions to the LIA once a solution to the NLS is known. In the present paper, the quantum form of the LIA (which includes mutual friction effects) is put into correspondence with a type of complex nonlinear dispersive partial differential equation (PDE) with cubic nonlinearity (similar in form to a Ginsburg-Landau equation, with add…
Aviation turbulence is modelled as an interaction between an aircraft and a vortex tube. The vortex tube can have an arbitrary orientation/offset with respect to the aircraft. We compare modelling the aircraft (i) as a point and (ii) having a finite area (wing and fuselage). We consider both vertical and horizontal acceleration experienced by the aircraft. The baseline vortex tube has an area which is of the order of the aircraft area.
The twist and writhe numbers and magnetic energy of an orthogonally perturbed vortex filaments are obtained from the computation of the magnetic helicity of geodesic and abnormal magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) vortex filament solutions. Twist is computed from a formula recently derived by Berger and Prior [J. Phys. A 39 (2006) 8321] and finally writhe is computed from the theorem that the helicity is proportional to the sum of twist and writhe. The writhe number is proportional to the total torsion and to integrals of the vector potential. The magnetic energy is computed in terms of the integral …
We present an accurate and robust numerical method to track quantized vortex lines in a superfluid described by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. By utilizing the pseudo-vorticity field of the associated complex scalar order parameter of the superfluid, we are able to track the topological defects of the superfluid and reconstruct the vortex lines which correspond to zeros of the field. Throughout, we assume our field is periodic to allow us to make extensive use of the Fourier representation of the field and its derivatives in order to retain spectral accuracy. We present several case studies to…
Gradient catastrophe and flutter instability in the motion of vortex filament within the localized induction approximation are analyzed. It is shown that the origin if this phenomenon is in the gradient catastrophe for the dispersionless Da Rios system which describes motion of filament with slow varying curvature and torsion. Geometrically this catastrophe manifests as a rapid oscillation of a filament curve in a point that resembles the flutter of airfoils. Analytically it is the elliptic umbilic singularity in the terminology of the catastrophe theory. It is demonstrated that its double sca…
Energy dissipation and pressure fluctuations are features inherent to turbulent fluid motion, and the internal origin of spatial and temporal temperature fluctuations. By measuring local velocity, pressure or temperature, it is possible to detect the presence of coherent structures ---like concentrated vortices--- and quantify their intensity. Here we report measurements of speed and temperature in a filamentary vortex lying in a strongly stretched turbulent airflow. The largest core temperature drop measured in our experiment was $ΔT = 9$ K, while the fastest measured air speed was $v_{max} =…
We comment on the paper by Van Gorder ["Motion of a helical vortex filament in superfluid ${}^4$He under the extrinsic form of the local induction approximation", Phys. Fluids 25, 085101 (2013)]. We point out that the flow of the normal fluid component parallel to the vortex will often lead into the Donnelly-Glaberson instability, which will cause the amplification of the Kelvin wave. We explain why the comparison to local nonlinear equation is unreasonable, and remark that neglecting the motion in the $x$-direction is not reasonable for a Kelvin wave with an arbitrary wave length and amplitud…
We study and characterize the breather-induced quantized superfluid vortex filaments which correspond to the Kuznetsov-Ma breather and super-regular breather excitations developing from localised perturbations. Such vortex filaments, emerging from an otherwise perturbed helical vortex, exhibit intriguing loop structures corresponding to the large amplitude of breathers due to the dual action of bending and twisting of the vortex. The loop induced by Kuznetsov-Ma breather emerges periodically as time increases, while the loop structure triggered by super-regular breather---the loop pair---exhib…
Modelling the vortex structures and then translating them into the corresponding velocity fields are two essential aspects for the vortex-based modelling works in wall-bounded turbulence. This work develops a datadriven method, which allows an effective reconstruction for the velocity field based on a given vortex field. The vortex field is defined as a vector field by combining the swirl strength and the real eigenvector of the velocity gradient tensor. The distinctive properties for the vortex field are investigated, with the relationship between the vortex magnitude and orientation revealed…
Using the Klein-Majda-Damodaran model of nearly-parallel vortex filaments, we construct vortex knots and links on a torus involving periodic boundary conditions and analyze their stability. For a special class of vortex knots -- toroidal knots -- we give a full characterization of both their energetic and dynamical stability. In addition to providing explicit expressions for the relevant waveforms, we derive explicit formulas for their stability boundaries. These include simple links and different realizations of a trefoil knot. It is shown that a ring of more than 7 filaments can potentially …
Quasiclassical approximation in the intrinsic description of the vortex filament dynamics is discussed. Within this approximation the governing equations are given by elliptic system of quasi-linear PDEs of the first order. Dispersionless Da Rios system and dispersionless Hirota equation are among them. They describe motion of vortex filament with slow varying curvature and torsion without or with axial flow. Gradient catastrophe for governing equations is studied. It is shown that geometrically this catastrophe manifests as a fast oscillation of a filament curve around the rectifying plane wh…
This paper presents a new representation of curve dynamics, with applications to vortex filaments in fluid dynamics. Instead of representing these filaments with explicit curve geometry and Lagrangian equations of motion, we represent curves implicitly with a new co-dimensional 2 level set description. Our implicit representation admits several redundant mathematical degrees of freedom in both the configuration and the dynamics of the curves, which can be tailored specifically to improve numerical robustness, in contrast to naive approaches for implicit curve dynamics that suffer from overwhel…
At high Reynolds number, the interaction between two vortex tubes leads to intense velocity gradients, which are at the heart of fluid turbulence. This vorticity amplification comes about through two different instability mechanisms of the initial vortex tubes, assumed anti-parallel and with a mirror plane of symmetry. At moderate Reynolds number, the tubes destabilize via a Crow instability, with the nonlinear development leading to strong flattening of the cores into thin sheets. These sheets then break down into filaments which can repeat the process. At higher Reynolds number, the instabil…
An inverse turbulent cascade in a restricted two-dimensional periodic domain leads to the creation of condensate -- a pair of coherent system-size vortices. We perform extensive numerical simulations of this system and carry on detailed theoretical analysis based upon momentum and energy exchanges between the turbulence fluctuations and the mean coherent condensate (vortices). The theory predicts the vortex profile and amplitude which perfectly agree with the numerical data.
In two dimensional turbulence, vortex thinning process is one of the attractive mechanism to explain inverse energy cascade in terms of vortex dynamics. By direct numerical simulation to the two-dimensional Navier-Stokes equations with small-scale forcing and large-scale damping, Xiao-Wan-Chen-Eyink (2009) found an evidence that inverse energy cascade may proceed with the vortex thinning mechanism. The aim of this paper is to analyze the vortex-thinning mechanism mathematically (using the incompressible Euler equations), and give a mathematical evidence that large-scale vorticity gains energy …
We study two dimensional superfluid turbulence by employing an effective description valid in the limit where the density of superfluid vortices is parametrically small. At sufficiently low temperatures the effective description yields an inverse cascade with Kolmogorov energy spectrum $E(k) \sim k^{-5/3}$. Denoting the number of vortices as a function of time by $N(t)$, we find that the vortex annihilation rate scales like $\dot N \sim N^{5/3}$ in states with an inverse cascade and $\dot N \sim N^2$ for laminar flow.
We investigate the dynamics of energy cascades in quantum turbulence by directly observing the vorticity distributions in numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. By Fourier filtering each scale of the vorticity distribution, we find that antiparallel vortex tubes at a large scale generate small-scale vortex tubes orthogonal to those at the large scale, which is a manifestation of the energy cascade from large to small scales. We reveal the dynamics of quantized vortex lines in these processes.
The convergence characteristics of two viscous core corrections as used in straight-line segmentation methods are rigorously analysed. These are \emph{curvature corrections} that account for the induced velocity contribution at a point on a vortex filament due to local curvature and \emph{core corrections} that remove unrealistically high induced velocities near vortex segments. Two alternative versions of the latter correction are studied: the original as introduced by Scully and a recently introduced improved correction by the authors. The problem is analysed using a viscous vortex ring. A h…
The dynamics of interacting quantized vortex filaments in a rotating trapped Bose-Einstein condensate, which is in the Thomas-Fermi regime at zero temperature and described by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, is considered in the hydrodynamic "anelastic" approximation. In the presence of a smoothly inhomogeneous array of filaments (vortex lattice), a non-canonical Hamiltonian equation of motion is derived for the macroscopically averaged vorticity, with taking into account the spatial non-uniformity of the equilibrium condensate density determined by the trap potential. A minimum of the correspo…
Vorticity in turbulent flows is often organized into complex geometries that influence the dynamics. We use a relatively novel approach to describe these geometries: that of obtaining segments of vortex lines embedded in the flow. This enables us to quantify the geometric features of these objects. Vortex lines differ widely in their behaviour but we find some unifying features. The decay from high levels of vorticity is shown to happen over a short fraction of the vortex length. The local curvature is inversely related with the vorticity magnitude. Strong parts of vortex lines bundle together…
Measurements of the energy spectrum and of the vortex-density fluctuation spectrum in superfluid turbulence seem to contradict each other. Using a numerical model, we show that at each instance of time the total vortex line density can be decomposed into two parts: one formed by metastable bundles of coherent vortices, and one in which the vortices are randomly oriented. We show that the former is responsible for the observed Kolmogorov energy spectrum, and the latter for the spectrum of the vortex line density fluctuations.
This report addresses an important question discussed by the quantum turbulence community during the last decade: do quantized vortices form, in zero-temperature superfluids, coherent structures similar to vortex tubes in ordinary, viscous turbulence? So far the evidence provided by numerical simulations is that bundles of quantized vortices appear in finite-temperature superfluids, but from the interaction with existing coherent structures in the turbulent (viscous) normal fluid, rather than due to the intrinsic superfuid dynamics. In this report we show that, in very intense quantum turbulen…
Geometry, elasticity, and activity in the transport of self-propelled filaments in turbulence
International Centre for Theoretical Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research（国际理论科学中心，塔塔基础研究院）；Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science（印度科学学院物理系）；Complex Fluids and Flows Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University（冲绳科学技术大学院大学复杂流体与流动单元）
The energy transfer mechanism in zero temperature superfluid turbulence of helium-4 is still a widely debated topic. Currently, the main hypothesis is that weakly nonlinear interacting Kelvin waves transfer energy to sufficiently small scales such that energy is dissipated as heat via phonon excitations. Theoretically, there are at least two proposed theories for Kelvin-wave interactions. We perform the most comprehensive numerical simulation of weakly nonlinear interacting Kelvin-waves to date and show, using a specially designed numerical algorithm incorporating the full Biot-Savart equation…
Unstable shear layers in environmental and industrial flows roll up into a series of vortices, which often form complex nonlinear merging patterns like pairs and triplets. These patterns crucially determine the subsequent turbulence, mixing and scalar transport. We show that the late-time, highly nonlinear merging patterns are predictable from the linearized initial state. The initial asymmetry between consecutive wavelengths of the vertical velocity field provides an effective measure of the strength and pattern of vortex merging. The predictions of this measure are substantiated using direct…
The understanding of turbulent flows is one of the biggest current challenges in physics, as no first-principles theory exists to explain their observed spatio-temporal intermittency. Turbulent flows may be regarded as an intricate collection of mutually-interacting vortices. This picture becomes accurate in quantum turbulence, which is built on tangles of discrete vortex filaments. Here, we study the statistics of velocity circulation in quantum and classical turbulence. We show that, in quantum flows, Kolmogorov turbulence emerges from the correlation of vortex orientations, while deviations…
Cellular suspensions such as dense bacterial flows exhibit a turbulence-like phase under certain conditions. We study this phenomenon of "active turbulence" statistically by using numerical tools. Following Wensink et al. [Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 109, 14308 (2012)], we model active turbulence by means of a generalized Navier-Stokes equation. Two-point velocity statistics of active turbulence, both in the Eulerian and the Lagrangian frame, is explored. We characterize the scale-dependent features of two-point statistics in this system. Furthermore, we extend this statistical study with me…
We compute the frequency spectrum of turbulent superfluid vortex density fluctuations and obtain the same Kolmogorov scaling which has been observed in a recent experiment in Helium-4. We show that the scaling can be interpreted in terms of the spectrum of reconnecting material lines. The calculation is performed using a vortex tree algorithm which considerably speeds up the evaluation of Biot-Savart integrals.
Filamentary regions of high vorticity irregularly form and disappear in the turbulent flows of classical fluids. We report an experimental comparative study of these so-called " coherent structures " in a classical versus quantum fluid, using liquid helium with a superfluid fraction varied from 0% up to 83%. The low pressure core of the vorticity filaments is detected by pressure probes located on the sidewall of a 78-cm-diameter Von Kármán cell driven up to record turbulent intensity (R $λ$ $\sim$ $\sqrt$ Re 10000). The statistics of occurrence, magnitude and relative distribution of the fila…
The density fluctuations of quantum vortex lines are measured in a turbulent flow of superfluid He, at temperatures corresponding to superfluid fraction of 16%, 47% and 81%. The probe is a micro-fabricated second sound resonator that allows for local and small-scale measurements in the core of the flow, at a 10-mesh-size behind a grid. Remarkably, all the vortex power spectra collapse on a single master curve, independently from the superfluid fraction and the mean velocity. By contrast with previous measurements, we report an peculiar shape of the power spectra. The vortex density probability…
Superfluid turbulence, often referred to as quantum turbulence, is a fascinating phenomenon for which a satisfactory theoretical framework is lacking. Holographic duality provides a systematic new approach to studying quantum turbulence by mapping the dynamics of certain quantum theories onto the dynamics of classical gravity. We use this gravitational description to numerically construct turbulent flows in a holographic superfluid in two spatial dimensions. We find that the superfluid kinetic energy spectrum obeys the Kolmogorov -5/3 scaling law, as it does for turbulent flows in normal fluid…
