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 helicity. We present several examples for calculating internal twist to illustrate why the centreline helicity alone will lead to ambiguous results if a twist contribution is not introduced. Our choice of the spanwise vector can be expressed in terms of the tangential component of velocity along the filament. Since the tangential velocity does not alter the configuration of the vortex at later times, we are able to recover a similar equation for the internal twist angle for classical vortex tubes. Our results allow us to explain how a quasi-classical limit of helicity emerges from helicity considerations for individual superfluid vortex filaments.
Here we show that under quantum reconnection, simulated by using the three-dimensional Gross- Pitaevskii equation, self-helicity of a system of two interacting vortex rings remains conserved. By resolving the fine structure of the vortex cores, we demonstrate that total length of the vortex system reaches a maximum at the reconnection time, while both writhe helicity and twist helicity remain separately unchanged throughout the process. Self-helicity is computed by two independent methods, and topological information is based on the extraction and analysis of geometric quantities such as writh…
Vortex breakdown phenomena in the axial vortices is an important feature which occurs frequently in geophysical flows (tornadoes and hurricanes) and in engineering flows (flow past delta wings, Von-Kerman vortex dynamo). We analyze helicity for axisymmetric vortex breakdown and propose a simplified formulation. For such cases, negative helicity is shown to conform to the vortex breakdown. A model problem has been analyzed to verify the results. The topology of the vortex breakdown is governed entirely by helicity density in the vertical plane. Our proposed methodology may be regarded as the pr…
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 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 consider the reconnection of two untwisted, linked quantised vortex rings in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that the reconnection is capable of transferring helicity, from the links present in the initial configuration, to a twisting of the resulting vortex ring, and hence a rotation of the phase plane along the vortex ring. As velocities in a quantum fluid are the gradient of the phase, a twisting of the phase along the vortices leads to an axial flow along the vortices. Hence one would expect that the dynamics of quantum turbulence are strongly influence by the helicity of the initia…
The conjecture that helicity (or knottedness) is a fundamental conserved quantity has a rich history in fluid mechanics, but the nature of this conservation in the presence of dissipation has proven difficult to resolve. Making use of recent advances, we create vortex knots and links in viscous fluids and simulated superfluids and track their geometry through topology changing reconnections. We find that the reassociation of vortex lines through a reconnection enables the transfer of helicity from links and knots to helical coils. This process is remarkably efficient, owing to the anti-paralle…
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.
In this paper we determine the velocity, the energy and estimate writhe and twist helicity contributions of vortex filaments in the shape of torus knots and unknots (toroidal and poloidal coils) in a perfect fluid. Calculations are performed by numerical integration of the Biot-Savart law. Vortex complexity is parametrized by the winding number $w$, given by the ratio of the number of meridian wraps to that of the longitudinal wraps. We find that for $w<1$ vortex knots and toroidal coils move faster and carry more energy than a reference vortex ring of same size and circulation, whereas for $w…
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…
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…
On the basis of solutions of the Bragg-Hawthorne equations we discuss the helicity of thin toroidal vortices with the swirl - the orbital motion along the torus diretrix. It is shown that relationship of the helicity with circulations along the small and large linked circles - directrix and generatrix of the torus - depends on distribution of the azimuthal velocity in the core of the swirling vortex ring. In the case of non-homogeneous swirl this relationship differs from the well-known Moffat relationship - the doubled product of such circulations multiplied by the number of links. The result…
Experimental and numerical study of the steady-state cyclonic vortex from isolated heat source in a rotating fluid layer is described. The structure of laboratory cyclonic vortex is similar to the typical structure of tropical cyclones from observational data and numerical modelling including secondary flows in the boundary layer. Differential characteristics of the flow were studied by numerical simulation using CFD software FlowVision. Helicity distribution in rotating fluid layer with localized heat source was analysed. Two mechanisms which play role in helicity generation are found. The fi…
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…
In this paper we have continued the calculations made recently concerning he generalization of the minimal coupling prescription. We have obtained the Navier-Stokes equation for the charged fluid embedded into an electromagnetic field. We have analyzed the wave feature of the fields. Wave equations for velocity and vorticity were obtained and gauge choices were discussed. In this paper we have studied the evolution of helicity and circulation from the Maxwell type formulation to the equations of a compressible fluid, charged in interaction with an electromagnetic field. We see that for both he…
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 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 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…
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 correlati…
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…
We study the relaxation of a topologically non-trivial vortex braid with zero net helicity in a barotropic fluid. The aim is to investigate the extent to which the topology of the vorticity field -- characterized by braided vorticity field lines -- determines the dynamics, particularly the asymptotic behaviour under vortex reconnection in an evolution at high Reynolds numbers 25,000. Analogous to the evolution of braided magnetic fields in plasma, we find that the relaxation of our vortex braid leads to a simplification of the topology into large-scale regions of opposite swirl, consistent wit…
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…
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…
Helicity is a topological invariant that measures the linkage and knottedness of lines, tubes and ribbons. As such, it has found myriads of applications in astrophysics and solar physics, in fluid dynamics, in atmospheric sciences, and in biology. In quantum flows, where topology-changing reconnection events are a staple, helicity appears as a key quantity to study. However, the usual definition of helicity is not well posed in quantum vortices, and its computation based on counting links and crossings of vortex lines can be downright impossible to apply in complex and turbulent scenarios. We …
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 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…
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…
Experiments and numerical simulations show that quantum turbulence exists in two distinct limiting regimes: Kolmogorov turbulence (which shares with classical turbulence the important property of a cascade of kinetic energy from large eddies to small eddies) and Vinen turbulence (which is more similar to a random flow). In this work, we define a mesoscale helicity for the superfluid, which, tested in numerical experiments, distinguishes the two turbulent regimes, quantifying the amount of nonlocal vortex interactions and the orientation of the vortex lines.
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…
In this paper, we examine the dimensionality of a single electrically driven vortex bounded by two no-slip and perfectly insulating horizontal walls distant by $h$. The study was performed in the weakly inertial limit by means of an asymptotic expansion, which is valid for any Hartmann number. We show that the dimensionality of the leading order can be fully described using the single parameter $l_z^ν/ h$, where $l_z^ν$ represents the distance over which the Lorentz force is able to act before being balanced by viscous dissipation. The base flow happens to introduce inertial recirculations in …
In this Comment we would like to emphasize that in Phys. Rev. B 90, 104506 (2014) the calculated energy spectrum takes into account only the small interaction (cross) term and, additionally, this term is only calculated at the instant when the two vortices reconnect. The majority of the kinetic energy is contained in the self-energy term which has a characteristic spectrum of $1/k$. If this, and the additional average over time, is taken into account the suggested Kolmogorov type $k^{-5/3}$ spectrum is likely not visible in the kinetic energy spectrum which contains both terms. Therefore, we f…
The dynamics of the gauge vortex with arbitrary form of a contour is considered in the framework of the nonrelativistic Abelian Higgs model, including the possibility of the gauge field interaction with the fermion asymmetric background. The equations for the time derivatives of the curvature and the torsion of the vortex contour generalizing the Betchov-Da Rios equations in hydrodynamics, are obtained. They are applied to study the conservation of helicity of the gauge field forming the vortex, twist, and writhe numbers of the vortex contour. It is shown that the conservation of helicity is b…
This article investigates quantum oscillations of a vortex ring with zero thickness that evolves in a cylindrical domain $V = D \times [0,L]$. The symbol $D$ denotes the planar domain which is bounded by some closed connected curve $S$. The quantization scheme of this dynamical system is based on the approach proposed by the author earlier. As result, we find the discrete values $Γ_n$ for circulation $Γ$. In contrast to the traditional approach, where such quantities are usually postulated, the values $Γ_n$ are deduced rigorously as the consequence of the conventional scheme of quantum theory.…
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）
We study the scattering of vortex rings by a superfluid line vortex using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in a parameter regime where a hydrodynamic description based on a vortex filament approximation is applicable. By using a vortex extraction algorithm, we are able to track the location of the vortex ring as a function of time. Using this, we show that the scattering of the vortex ring in our Gross-Pitaevskii simulations is well captured by the local induction approximation of a vortex filament model for a wide range of impact parameters. The scattering of a vortex ring by a line vortex is ch…
