In a concurrent work, Villois et al. 2020 reported the evidence that vortex reconnections in quantum fluids follow an irreversible dynamics, namely vortices separate faster than they approach; such time-asymmetry is explained by using simple conservation arguments. In this work we develop further these theoretical considerations and provide a detailed study of the vortex reconnection process for all the possible geometrical configurations of the order parameter (superfluid) wave function. By matching the theoretical description of incompressible vortex filaments and the linear theory describing locally vortex reconnections, we determine quantitatively the linear momentum and energy exchanges between the incompressible (vortices) and the compressible (density waves) degrees of freedom of the superfluid. We show theoretically and corroborate numerically, why a unidirectional density pulse must be generated after the reconnection process and why only certain reconnecting angles, related to the rates of approach and separations, are allowed. Finally, some aspects concerning the conservation of centre-line helicity during the reconnection process are discussed.
We statistically study vortex reconnections in quantum fluids by evolving different realizations of vortex Hopf links using the Gross--Pitaevskii model. Despite the time-reversibility of the model, we report a clear evidence that the dynamics of the reconnection process is time-irreversible, as reconnecting vortices tend to separate faster than they approach. Thanks to a matching theory devised concurrently in Proment and Krstulovic (arXiv:2005.02047), we quantitatively relate the origin of this asymmetry to the generation of a sound pulse after the reconnection event. Our results have the pro…
We study reconnections of quantum vortices by numerically solving the governing Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find that the minimum distance between vortices scales differently with time before and after the vortex reconnection. We also compute vortex reconnections using the Biot-Savart law for vortex filaments of infinitesimal thickness, and find that, in this model, reconnection are time-symmetric. We argue that the likely cause of the difference between the Gross-Pitaevskii model and the Biot-Savart model is the intense rarefaction wave which is radiated away from a Gross-Pitaeveskii reconn…
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…
Reconnections between quantum vortex filaments in presence of trapped particles are investigated using numerical simulations of the Gross--Pitaevskii equation. Particles are described with classical degrees of freedom and modeled as highly repulsive potentials which deplete the superfluid. First, the case of a vortex dipole with a single particle trapped inside one of the vortices is studied. It is shown that the reconnection takes place at the position of the particle as a consequence of the symmetry breaking induced by it. The separation rate between the reconnecting points is compatible wit…
This paper addresses reconnection of vortex tubes, with particular focus on the topology of the vortex lines (field lines of the vorticity). This analysis of vortex line topology reveals previously undiscovered features of the reconnection process, such as the generation of many small flux rings, formed when reconnection occurs in multiple locations in the vortex sheet between the tubes. Consideration of three-dimensional reconnection principles leads to a robust measurement of the reconnection rate, even once instabilities break the symmetry. It also allows us to identify internal reconnectio…
In low-temperature superfluid helium, viscosity is zero, and vorticity takes the form of discrete, vortex filaments of fixed circulation and atomic thickness. We present numerical evidence of three-dimensional inverse energy transfer from small length scales to large length scales in superfluid turbulence generated by a flow of vortex rings. We argue that the effect arises from the anisotropy of the flow, which favours vortex reconnections of vortex loops of the same polarity, and that it has been indirectly observed in the laboratory. The effect open questions about analogies with related pro…
We demonstrate that a single reconnection of two quantum vortices can lead to creation of a cascade of vortex rings. Our analysis, motivated by the analytical solution in LIA, involves high-resolution Biot-Savart and Gross-Pitaevskii simulations. The latter showed that the rings cascade starts on the atomic scale, with rings diameters orders of magnitude smaller than the characteristic line spacing in the tangle. So created vortex rings may penetrate the tangle and annihilate on the boundaries. This provides an efficient mechanism of the vortex tangle decay in very low temperatures.
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…
Collisions in a beam of unidirectional quantized vortex rings of nearly identical radii $R$ in superfluid $^4$He in the limit of zero temperature (0.05 K) were studied using time-of-flight spectroscopy. Reconnections between two primary rings result in secondary vortex loops of both smaller and larger radii. Discrete steps in the distribution of flight times, due to the limits on the earliest possible arrival times of secondary loops created after either one or two consecutive reconnections, are observed. The density of primary rings was found to be capped at the value $500{\rm \,cm}^{-2} R^{-…
Reconnection plays a significant role in the dynamics of plasmas, polymers and macromolecules, as well as in numerous laminar and turbulent flow phenomena in both classical and quantum fluids. Extensive studies in quantum vortex reconnection show that the minimum separation distance δ between interacting vortices follows a 1/2 scaling. Due to the complex nature of the dynamics (e.g., the formation of bridges and threads as well as successive reconnections and avalanche), such scaling has never been reported for (classical) viscous vortex reconnection. Using the direct numerical simulation of t…
An insight into vortex reconnections in superfluids is presented making use of analytical results and numerical simulations of the Gross--Pitaevskii model. Universal aspects of the reconnection process are investigated by considering different initial vortex configurations and making use of a recently developed tracking algorithm to reconstruct the vortex filaments. We show that during a reconnection event the vortex lines approach and separate always accordingly to the time scaling $ δ\sim t^{1/2} $ with pre-factors that depend on the vortex configuration. We also investigate the behavior of …
This paper addresses the interaction of initially anti-parallel vortex tubes containing an axial flow that induces a twisting of the vortex lines around the tube axes, using numerical simulations. Vortex tube configurations with both the same and opposite senses of twist -- corresponding to same and opposite signs of kinetic helicity density -- are considered. It is found that the topology of the reconnection process is very different between the two cases. For tubes with the same sense of twist, the reconnection is fully three-dimensional (3D): vortex lines reconnect at a finite angle, and 3D…
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…
The study of vortex reconnections is an essential ingredient of understanding superfluid turbulence, a phenomenon recently also reported in trapped atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. In this work we show that, despite the established dependence of vortex motion on temperature in such systems, vortex reconnections are actually temperature independent on the typical length/time scales of atomic condensates. Our work is based on a dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the condensate, coupled to a semiclassical Boltzmann equation for the thermal cloud (the Zaremba-Nikuni-Griffin formalism). Com…
We investigate numerically the Navier-Stokes dynamics of reconnecting vortex rings at small $Re$ number. We find that reconnections are dissipative due to the smoothing of vorticity gradients at reconnection kinks and to the formation of secondary structures of stretched anti-parallel vorticity which transfer kinetic energy to small scales where it is subsequently dissipated efficiently. In addition, the relaxation of the reconnection kinks excites Kelvin waves which due to strong damping are of low wavenumber and affect directly only large scale properties of the flow.
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…
Vortex stretching in a compressible fluid is considered. Two-dimensional and axisymmetric cases are considered separately. The flows associated with the vortices are perpendicular to the plane of the uniform straining flows. Externally-imposed density build-up near the axis leads to enhanced compactness of the vortices - "dressed" vortices (in analogy to "dressed" charged particles in a dielectric system). The compressible vortex flow solutions in the 2D as well as axisymmetric cases identify a length scale relevant for the compressible case which leads to the Kadomtsev-Petviashvili spectrum f…
Experimental and simulational studies of the dynamics of vortex reconnections in quantum fluids showedthat the distance $d$ between the reconnecting vortices is close to a universal time dependence $d=D[κ|t_0-t|]^α$ with $α$ fluctuating around 1/2 and $κ=h/m$ is the quantum of circulation. Dimensional analysis, based on the assumption that the quantum of circulation $κ=h/m$ is the only relevant parameter in the problem, predicts $α=1/2$. The theoretical calculation of the dimensionless coefficient $D$ in this formula remained an open problem. In this Letter we present an analytic calculation o…
Analysis of the nonlinear Schrodinger vortex reconnection is given in terms of coordinate-time power series. The lowest order terms in these series correspond to a solution of the linear Schrodinger equation and provide several interesting properties of the reconnection process, in particular the non-singular character of reconnections, the anti-parallel configuration of vortex filaments and a square-root law of approach just before/after reconnections. The complete infinite power series represents a fully nonlinear analytical solution in a finite volume which includes the reconnection point, …
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…
We employ detailed numerical simulations to probe the mechanism of flow reversals in two-dimensional turbulent convection. We show that the reversals occur via vortex reconnection of two attracting corner rolls having same sign of vorticity, thus leading to major restructuring of the flow. Large fluctuations in heat transport are observed during the reversal due to this flow reconfiguration. The flow configurations during the reversals have been analyzed quantitatively using large-scale modes. Using these tools, we also show why flow reversals occur for a restricted range of Rayleigh and Prand…
In Part 1 of this work, we have derived a dynamical system describing the approach to a finite-time singularity of the Navier-Stokes equations. We now supplement this system with an equation describing the process of vortex reconnection at the apex of a pyramid, neglecting core deformation during the reconnection process. On this basis, we compute the maximum vorticity $ω_{max}$ as a function of vortex Reynolds number $R_Γ$ in the range $2000\le R_Γ\le 3400$, and deduce a compatible behaviour $ω_{max}\sim ω_{0}\exp{\left[1 + 220 \left(\log\left[R_Γ/2000\right]\right)^{2}\right]}$ as $R_Γ\right…
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…
From a new anti-parallel initial condition using long vortices, three-dimensional turbulence forms after two reconnection steps and the formation of at least one vortex ring. The long domain is needed in order to accommodate the multiple reconnections, which enhance vortex stretching rates and the generation of small-scale vortex structures within the vortex rings. In addition to making the initial vortices very long, new features introduced with this initial condition are an initial profile less likely to shed vortex sheets and an improved method for mapping the direction of the vorticity ont…
CEA, CNRS, SPEC, Université Paris-Saclay（法国原子能与替代能源委员会，法国国家科学研究中心，物理、化学与材料科学实验室，巴黎萨克雷大学）；Department of Mathematics and Statistics, McMaster University（麦克马斯特大学数学与统计系）；Univ. Lille, CNRS, ONERA, Arts et Metiers ParisTech, Centrale Lille（里尔大学，法国国家科学研究中心，法国航空航天研究院，巴黎国立高等工艺学院，里尔中央理工学院）
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 investigate the evolution of vortex-surface fields (VSFs) in compressible Taylor--Green flows at Mach numbers ($Ma$) ranging from 0.5 to 2.0 using direct numerical simulation. The formulation of VSFs in incompressible flows is extended to compressible flows, and a mass-based renormalization of VSFs is used to facilitate characterizing the evolution of a particular vortex surface. The effects of the Mach number on the VSF evolution are different in three stages. In the early stage, the jumps of the compressive velocity component near shocklets generate sinks to contract surrounding vortex su…
Within Density Functional Theory, we have investigated the coalescence dynamics of two superfluid helium nanodroplets hosting vortex lines in different relative orientations, which are drawn towards each other by the Van der Waals mutual attraction. We have found a rich phenomenology depending on how the vortex lines are oriented. In particular, when a vortex and anti-vortex lines are present in the merging droplets, a dark soliton develops at the droplet contact region, which eventually decays into vortex rings. Reconnection events are observed between the vortex lines or rings, leading to th…
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…
Kinetics of merging and breaking down vortex loops is the important part of the whole vortex tangle dynamics. Another part is the motion of individual lines, which obeys the Biot-Savart law in presence of friction force and of applied external velocity fields if any. In the present work we evaluate the coefficients of the reconnection rates $A(l_{1},l_{2},l)$ and $B(l,l_{1},l_{2})$. Quantity $A$ is a number (per unit of time and per unit of volume) of events, when two loops with lengths $l_{1}$and $l_{2}$ collide and form the single loop of length $ l=l_{1}+l_{2}$. Quantity $% B(l,l_{1},l_{2})…
Motivated by experiments performed in superfluid helium, we study numerically the motion of toroidal bundles of vortex filaments in an inviscid fluid. We find that the evolution of these large-scale vortex structures involves the generalised leapfrogging of the constituent vortex rings. Despite three dimensional perturbations in the form of Kelvin waves and vortex reconnections, toroidal vortex bundles retain their coherence over a relatively large distance (compared to their size), in agreement with experimental observations.
Quantum turbulence can be generated in superfluid helium either thermally (by applying a heat flux, as in thermal counterflow) or mechanically (by stirring the liquid). By modelling the superfluid vortex lines as reconnecting space curves with fixed circulation, and the driving normal fluid as a uniform flow (for thermal counterflow) and a synthetic turbulent flow (for mechanically-driven turbulence), we determine the difference between thermally-driven and mechanically-driven quantum turbulence. We find that in mechanically-driven turbulence the energy is concentrated at the large scales, the…
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…
In quantum fluids, the quantisation of circulation forbids the diffusion of a vortex swirling flow seen in classical viscous fluids. Yet, a quantum vortex accelerating in a superfluid may lose its energy into acoustic radiation, in a similar way an electric charge decelerates upon emitting photons. The dissipation of vortex energy underlies central problems in quantum hydrodynamics, such as the decay of quantum turbulence, highly relevant to systems as varied as neutron stars, superfluid helium and atomic condensates. A deep understanding of the elementary mechanisms behind irreversible vortex…
We study the dynamics of a nearly incompressible fluid via (classical) effective field theory. In the kinematical regime corresponding to near incompressibility (small fluid velocities and accelerations), compressional modes are, by definition, difficult to excite, and can be dealt with perturbatively. We systematically outline the corresponding perturbative expansion, which can be thought of as an expansion in the ratio of fluid velocity and speed of sound. Our analysis is fully relativistic, but, if desired, the non-relativistic limit can be taken at any stage. We demonstrate the potential o…
We investigate wave-vortex interaction emerging from an expanding compact vortex cluster in a two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate. We adapt techniques developed for compact gravitational objects to derive the characteristic modes of the wave-vortex interaction perturbatively around an effective vortex flow field. We demonstrate the existence of orbits or sound-rings, in analogy to gravitational light-rings, and compute the characteristic spectrum for the out-of-equilibrium vortex cluster. The spectrum obtained from numerical simulations of a stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii equation exhibiting…
The evolution and self-reconnection of a perturbed trefoil vortex knot is simulated, then compared to recent experimental measurements (Scheeler et al. 2014a). Qualitative comparisons using three-dimensional vorticity isosurfaces and lines, then quantitative comparisons using the helicity. To have a single initial reconnection, as in the experiments, the trefoil is perturbed by 4 weak vortex rings. Initially there is a long period with deformations similar to the experiment during which the energy, continuum helicity and topological self-linking number are all preserved. In the next period, on…
General properties of conservative hydrodynamic-type models are treated from positions of the canonical formalism adopted for liquid continuous media, with applications to the compressible Eulerian hydrodynamics, special- and general-relativistic fluid dynamics, and two-fluid plasma model including the Hall-magnetohydrodynamics. A variational formulation is found for motion and interaction of frozen-in localized vortex structures and acoustic waves in a special description where dynamical variables are, besides the Eulerian fields of the fluid density and the potential component of the canonic…
Acoustic measurements on a vortex whistle corroborates earlier findings that the frequency increases linearly with the velocity of the air flowing into the whistle. Measurements in a reverberant chamber shows that the acoustic power generated by the whistle increases close to the sixth power of the frequency. PIV and hot-wire measurements give quantitative information on the flow. It is shown that the flow exits the pipe as a swirling annulus with a rotation corresponding to the frequency of the sound, and that the center of the swirl follows a nearly circular path in the exit plane. The PIV m…
A recent experiment has shown that a tangle of quantized vortices in superfluid $^4$He decayed even at mK temperatures where the normal fluid was negligible and no mutual friction worked. Motivated by this experiment, this work studies numerically the dynamics of the vortex tangle without the mutual friction, thus showing that a self-similar cascade process, whereby large vortex loops break up to smaller ones, proceeds in the vortex tangle and is closely related with its free decay. This cascade process which may be covered with the mutual friction at higher temperatures is just the one at zer…
Superfluidity is a special state of matter exhibiting macroscopic quantum phenomena and acting like a fluid with zero viscosity. In such a state, superfluid vortices exist as phase singularities of the model equation with unique distributions. This paper presents novel techniques to aid the visual understanding of superfluid vortices based on the state-of-the-art non-linear Klein-Gordon equation, which evolves a complex scalar field, giving rise to special vortex lattice/ring structures with dynamic vortex formation, reconnection, and Kelvin waves, etc. By formulating a numerical model with th…
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 present study reports the effect of different source terms on the near and far-field acoustic characteristics of compressible flow over a rectangular cavity using hybrid computational aeroacoustics methodology. We use a low dispersive and dissipative compressible fluid flow solver in conjunction with an acoustic perturbation equation solver based on the spectral/hp element method. The hybrid approach involves calculating the base fields and the acoustic sources from a fluid simulation in the first step. In the next step, the acoustic solver utilizes the variables to predict the acoustic pr…
Using two innovations, smooth, but distinctly different, scaling laws for the numerical reconnection of pairs of initially orthogonal and anti-parallel quantum vortices are obtained using the three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equations, the simplest mean-field non-linear Schrödinger equation for a quantum fluid. The first innovation suppresses temporal fluctuations by using an initial density profile that is slightly below the usual two-dimensional steady-state Padé approximate profiles. The second innovation is to find the trajectories of the quantum vortices from a pseudo-vorticity construc…
The idea that the knottedness (hydrodynamic Helicity) of a fluid flow is conserved has a long history in fluid mechanics. The quintessential example of a knotted flow is a knotted vortex filament, however, owing to experimental difficulties, it has not been possible until recently to directly generate knotted vortices in real fluids. Using 3D printed hydrofoils and high-speed laser scanning tomography, we generate vortex knots and links and measure their subsequent evolution. In both cases, we find that the vortices deform and stretch until a series of vortex reconnections occurs, eventually r…
We study numerically the formation of a vortex lattice inside a rotating bucket containing superfluid helium, paying attention to an important feature which is practically unavoidable in all experiments: the microscopic roughness of the bucket's surface. We model this using the Gross-Pitaevskii for a weakly-interacting Bose gas, a model which is idealised when applied to superfluid helium but captures the key physics of the vortex dynamics which we are interested in. We find that the vortex lattice arises from the interaction and reconnections of nucleated U-shaped vortex lines, which merge an…
We model the superfluid flow of liquid helium over the rough surface of a wire (used to experimentally generate turbulence) profiled by atomic force microscopy. Numerical simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation reveal that the sharpest features in the surface induce vortex nucleation both intrinsically (due to the raised local fluid velocity) and extrinsically (providing pinning sites to vortex lines aligned with the flow). Vortex interactions and reconnections contribute to form a dense turbulent layer of vortices with a non-classical average velocity profile which continually sheds smal…
Vorticity in two-dimensional superfluids is subject to intense research efforts due to its role in quantum turbulence, dissipation and the BKT phase transition. Interaction of sound and vortices is of broad importance in Bose-Einstein condensates and superfluid helium [1-4]. However, both the modelling of the vortex flow field and of its interaction with sound are complicated hydrodynamic problems, with analytic solutions only available in special cases. In this work, we develop methods to compute both the vortex and sound flow fields in an arbitrary two-dimensional domain. Further, we analyse…
In the present study, quantitative feasibility tests of the hydrodynamic description of a two-dimensional fluid at the molecular level are performed, both with respect to length and time scales. Using high-resolution fluid velocity data obtained from extensive molecular dynamics simulations, we computed the transverse and longitudinal components of the velocity field by the Helmholtz decomposition and compared them with those obtained from the linearized Navier-Stokes (LNS) equations with time-dependent transport coefficients. By investigating the vortex dynamics and the sound wave propagation…
