Development of experimental techniques to study superfluid dynamics, in particular, application of nanomechanical oscillators to drive vortex lines, enables potential observation of the Kelvin-wave cascade on quantized vortices. One of the first questions which then arises in analysis of the experimental results is the relation between the energy flux in the cascade and the amplitude of the Kelvin waves. We provide such relation based on the L'vov-Nazarenko picture of the cascade. Remarkably, the amplitude of the waves depends on the energy flux extermely weakly, as power one tenth.
The article considers implications of tilt symmetry (symmetry with respect to tilting of the coordinate axis with respect to which vortex motion is studied) in the non-linear dynamics of Kelvin waves. The conclusion is that although the spectrum of Kelvin wave is not tilt-invariant, this does not compromise tilt invariance of the Kelvin-wave cascade vividly argued now in the theory of superfluid turbulence. The article investigates the effect of strong kelvon interaction on the power-law exponent for the Kelvin-wave cascade and suggests a simple picture of the crossover from the classical Kolm…
In the recently published preprint arXiv:200.02610 Eltsov and L'vov calculated the amplitudes of waves in the Kelvin-wave cascades. This returns us to the rather old, but still unresolved dispute on the role of the tilt symmetry and the locality in the Kelvin-wave cascade. The estimations by Eltsov and L'vov show that the possible nonlocality of the energy flux in the Kelvin-wave cascade has no essential effect on the Kelvin-wave cascade in the 3D vortex tangle.
I discuss the Comment by L'vov and Nazarenko (arXiv:1208.4593) aiming at refutation of my perviously published criticism of their mechanism of the Kelvin-wave cascade. It is important that in their Comment L'vov and Nazarenko admitted that the Hamiltonian, from which they derived their mechanism, is not tilt-invariant. This provides full ammunition to their critics, who believe that their mechanism is in conflict with tilt symmetry of the Kelvin-wave dynamics in an isotropic space.
As long as vorticity quantization remains irrelevant for the long-wave physics, superfluid turbulence supports a regime macroscopically identical to the Kolmogorov cascade of a normal liquid. At high enough wavenumbers, the energy flux in the wavelength space is carried by individual Kelvin-wave cascades on separate vortex lines. We analyze the transformation of the Kolmogorov cascade into the Kelvin-wave cascade, revealing a chain of three distinct intermediate cascades, supported by local-induction motion of the vortex lines, and distinguished by specific reconnection mechanisms. The most pr…
A Kolmogorov-type cascade of Kelvin waves--the distortion waves on vortex lines--plays a key part in the relaxation of superfluid turbulence at low temperatures. We propose an efficient numeric scheme for simulating the Kelvin wave cascade on a single vortex line. The idea is likely to be generalizable for a full-scale simulation of different regimes of superfluid turbulence. With the new scheme, we are able to unambiguously resolve the cascade spectrum exponent, and thus to settle the controversy between recent simulations [1] and recently developed analytic theory [2]. [1] W.F. Vinen, M. Tsu…
Theoretical considerations are made of superfluid turbulence in the Kelvin wave cascade regime at low temperatures (T < 1K) and length scales of the order or smaller than the intervortical distance. The energy spectrum is shown to be in accord with the Kolmogorov scaling. The vortex line decay equation is shown to have an underlying Hamiltonian framework. Effects of spatial intermittency (exhibited in laboratory experiments) on superfluid turbulence are incorporated via the fractal nature of the vortex lines, for length scales of the order or smaller than the intervortical distance. The spatia…
Direct numeric simulation of the Biot-Savart equation readily resolves the 17/5 spectrum of the Kelvin-wave cascade from the 11/3 spectrum of the non-local (in the wavenumber space) cascade scenario by L'vov and Nazarenko. This result is a clear-cut visualisation of the unphysical nature of the 11/3 solution, which was established earlier on the grounds of symmetry.
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…
We performed numerical simulations of decaying quantum turbulence by using a generalized Gross-Pitaevskii equation, that includes a beyond mean field correction and a nonlocal interaction potential. The nonlocal potential is chosen in order to mimic He II by introducing a roton minimum in the excitation spectrum. We observe that at large scales the statistical behavior of the flow is independent of the interaction potential, but at scales smaller than the intervortex distance a Kelvin wave cascade is enhanced in the generalized model. In this range, the incompressible kinetic energy spectrum o…
We study the statistical properties of the Kelvin waves propagating along quantized superfluid vortices driven by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. No artificial forcing or dissipation is added. Vortex positions are accurately tracked. This procedure directly allows us to obtain the Kevin-waves occupation-number spectrum. Numerical data obtained from long time integration and ensemble-average over initial conditions supports the spectrum proposed in [L'vov and Nazarenko, JETP Lett 91, 428 (2010)]. Kelvin wave modes in the inertial range are found to be Gaussian as expected by weak-turbulence pred…
Reconnections of quantum vortex filaments create sharp bends which degenerate into propagating Kelvin waves. These waves cascade their energy down-scale and their waveaction up-scale via weakly nonlinear interactions, and this is the main mechanism of turbulence at the scales less than the inter-vortex distance. In case of an idealised forcing concentrated around a single scale k0, the turbulence spectrum exponent has a pure direct cascade form -17/5 at scales k>k0 and a pure inverse cascade form -3 at k<k0. However, forcing produced by the reconnections contains a broad range of Fourier modes…
On the basis of recently proposed scenario of the transformation of the Kolmogorov cascade into the Kelvin-wave cascade, we develop a theory of low-temperature cutoff. The theory predicts a specific behavior of the quantized vortex line density, $L$, controlled by the frictional coefficient, $α(T) \ll 1$, responsible for the cutoff. The curve $\ln L(\ln α)$ is found to directly reflect the structure of the cascade, revealing four qualitatively distinct wavenumber regions. Excellent agreement with recent experiment by Walmsley {\it et al.} [arXiv:0710.1033]--in which $L(T)$ has been measured do…
We present a comprehensive statistical study of free decay of the quantized vortex tangle in superfluid $^4$He at low and ultra-low temperatures, $0\leqslant T \leqslant 1.1\,$K. Using high resolution vortex filament simulations with full Biot-Savart vortex dynamics, we show that for ultra-low temperatures $T\lesssim 0.5 \,$K, when the mutual friction parameters $α\simeq α' < 10^{-5}$, the vortex reconnections excite Kelvin waves with wave lengths $λ$ of the order of the inter-vortex distance $\ell$. These excitations cascade down to the resolution scale $Δξ$ which in our simulations is of the…
We report on the analysis of the root mean square curvature as a function of the numerical resolution for a single reconnection of two quantized vortex rings in superfluid helium. We find a similar scaling relation as reported in the case of decaying thermal counterflow simulations by L. Kondaurova et al. There the scaling was related to the existence of a Kelvin-wave cascade which was suggested to support the L'vov-Nazarenko spectrum. Here we provide an alternative explanation that does not involve the Kelvin-wave cascade but is due to the sharp cusp generated by a reconnection event in a sit…
We determine numerically the steady-state spectrum for Kelvin waves on a superfluid 4He vortex that is driven by shaking its end points and damped by mutual friction. The relaxation rate towards a steady state is determined by the mutual friction. We have reached the zero temperature limit where the steady-state spectrum and the vortex length become independent of the temperature. Our drive with pointlike pinning sites produces a characteristic spectrum with $|w_m|\propto m^{-η}$, where $η\approx$ 1.88. The spatially sharply peaked drive and the fact that we are fixing the oscillation amplitud…
Two vortex rings can form a localized configuration whereby they continually pass through one another in an alternating fashion. This phenomenon is called leapfrogging. Using parameters suitable for superfluid helium-4, we describe a recurrence phenomenon that is similar to leapfrogging, which occurs for two coaxial straight vortex filaments with the same Kelvin wave mode. For small-amplitude Kelvin waves we demonstrate that our full Biot-Savart simulations closely follow predictions obtained from a simpified model that provides an analytical approximation developed for nearly parallel vortice…
We investigate a single vortex reconnection event in superfluid helium at finite temperatures using the vortex filament model. The reconnection induces Kelvin waves which strongly increase energy dissipation. We evaluate the mutual friction dissipation from the reconnection and show that the dissipation power has universal form, which is seen by scaling both time (measured from the reconnection event) and power by the mutual friction parameter alpha. This observation allows us to conclude that the Kelvin-wave cascade is not important in the energy dissipation process within the range alpha > 0…
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 contributio…
Dynamics of quantized vortex lines in a superfluid feature symmetries associated with the geometric character of the complex-valued field, $w(z)=x(z)+iy(z)$, describing the instant shape of the line. Along with a natural set of Noether's constants of motion, which---apart from their rather specific expressions in terms of $w(z)$---are nothing but components of the total linear and angular momenta of the fluid, the geometric symmetry brings about crucial consequences for kinetics of distortion waves on the vortex lines---the Kelvin waves. It is the geometric symmetry that renders Kelvin-wave ca…
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 the 3D forced-dissipated Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We force at relatively low wave numbers, expecting to observe a direct energy cascade and a consequent power-law spectrum of the form $k^{-α}$. Our numerical results show that the exponent $α$ strongly depends on how the inverse particle cascade is attenuated at $k$'s lower than the forcing wave number. If the inverse cascade is arrested by a friction at low $k$'s, we observe an exponent which is in good agreement with the weak wave turbulence prediction $k^{-1}$. For a hypo-viscosity, a $k^{-2}$ spectrum is observed which we explain…
Based on measurements of nonlinear second sound resonances in a high-quality resonator, we have observed a steady-state wave energy cascade in He II involving a flux of energy through the spectral range towards high frequencies. We show that the energy balance in the wave system is nonlocal in K-space and that the frequency scales of energy pumping and dissipation are widely separated. The wave amplitude distribution follows a power law over a wide range of frequencies. Numerical computations yield results in agreement with the experimental observations. We suggest that second sound cascades o…
