Finite-temperature quantum turbulence is often described in terms of two immiscible fluids that can flow with a non-zero mean relative velocity. Such out-of-equilibrium state is known as counterflow superfluid turbulence. We report here the emergence of a counterflow-induced inverse energy cascade in three-dimensional superfluid flows by performing extensive numerical simulations of the Hall-Vinen-Bekarevich-Khalatnikov model. As the intensity of the mean counterflow is increased, an abrupt transition, from a fully three-dimensional turbulent flow to a quasi two-dimensional system exhibiting a split cascade, is observed. The findings of this work could motivate new experimental settings to study quasi two-dimensional superfluid turbulence in the bulk of three-dimensional experiments. They might also find applications beyond superfluids in systems described by more than one fluid component.
We develop an analytic theory of strong anisotropy of the energy spectra in the thermally-driven turbulent counterflow of superfluid He-4. The key ingredients of the theory are the three-dimensional differential closure for the vector of the energy flux and the anisotropy of the mutual friction force. We suggest an approximate analytic solution of the resulting energy-rate equation, which is fully supported by the numerical solution. The two-dimensional energy spectrum is strongly confined in the direction of the counterflow velocity. In agreement with the experiment, the energy spectra in the…
We describe a new technique, using thin lines of triplet-state He2 molecular tracers created by femtosecond-laser field-ionization of helium atoms, for visualizing the flow of the normal fluid in superfluid 4He, together with its application to thermal counterflow in a channel. We show that, at relatively small velocities, where the superfluid is already turbulent, the flow of the normal fluid remains laminar, but with a distorted velocity profile, while at a higher velocity there is a transition to turbulence. The form of the structure function in this turbulent state differs significantly fr…
We have simulated the decay of thermal counterflow quantum turbulence from a statistically steady state at T=1.9[K], with the assumption that the normal fluid is at rest during the decay. The results are consistent with the predictions of the Vinen equation (in essence the vortex line density (VLD) decays as t^{-1}). For the statistically steady state, we determine the parameter c_2, which connects the curvature of the vortex lines and the mean separation of vortices. A formula connecting the parameter χ_2 of the Vinen equation with c_2 is shown to agree with the results of the simulations. Di…
The coupled dynamics of the two-fluid model of superfluid $^4$He is numerically studied for quantum turbulence of the thermal counterflow in a square channel. We combine the vortex filament model of the superfluid and the Navier-Stokes equations of normal fluid. Simulations of the coupled dynamics show that the velocity profile of the normal fluid is deformed significantly by superfluid turbulence as the vortices become dense. This result is consistent with recently performed visualization experiments. We introduce a dimensionless parameter that characterizes the deformation of the velocity pr…
Superfluid helium is an intimate mixture of a viscous normal fluid, with continuous vorticity, and an inviscid superfluid, where vorticity is constrained to thin, stable topological defects. One mechanism to generate turbulence in this system is through the application of a heat flux, so called thermal counterflow. Of particular interest is how turbulence in the superfluid responds to both a laminar and turbulent normal fluid in the presence of walls. We model superfluid vortex lines as reconnecting space curves with fixed circulation, and consider both laminar (Poiseuille) and turbulent norma…
Particles are today the main tool to study superfluid turbulence and visualize quantum vortices. In this work, we study the dynamics and the spatial distribution of particles in co-flow and counterflow superfluid helium turbulence in the framework of the two-fluid Hall-Vinen-Bekarevich-Khalatnikov (HVBK) model. We perform three-dimensional numerical simulations of the HVBK equations along with the particle dynamics that depends on the motion of both fluid components. We find that, at low temperatures, where the superfluid mass fraction dominates, particles strongly cluster in vortex filaments …
We investigate the thermal counterflow of the superfluid $^4$He by numerically simulating three-dimensional fully coupled dynamics of the two fluids, namely quantized vortices and a normal fluid. We analyze the velocity fluctuations of the laminar normal fluid arising from the mutual friction with the quantum turbulence of the superfluid component. The streamwise fluctuations exhibit higher intensity and longer-range autocorrelation, as compared to transverse ones. The anomalous fluctuations are consistent with visualization experiments [Mastracci et al., Phys. Rev. Fluids, Vol. 4, 083305 (201…
We show by direct numerical simulations that the turbulence generated by steadily heating a long cylinder immersed in helium~II is strongly inhomogeneous and consists of a dense turbulent layer of quantized vortices localized around the cylinder. We analyse the properties of this superfluid turbulence in terms of radial distribution of the vortex line density and the anisotropy and we compare these properties to the better known properties of homogeneous counterflow turbulence in channels.
Heat is carried in superfluid He-4 by the motion of the normal fluid$^{1}$, a counterflowing superfluid component serving to eliminate any net mass flow. It has been known for many years that above a critical heat current the superfluid component in this counterflow becomes turbulent. This turbulence takes the form of a disorganized tangle of quantized vortex lines and is maintained by the relative motion of the two fluids$^{2-3}$. It has been suspected that the normal fluid may also become turbulent$^{4}$, but experimental verification is difficult without a technique for visualizing the flow…
The interpretation of data obtained from particle image/tracking velocimetry in the study of superfluid flows has been so far a challenging task. Tracking particles (as solid hydrogen or deuterium) are attracted to the cores of quantized vortices, so that their dynamics can be strongly affected by the surrounding vortex tangle. Previous phenomenological arguments indicate that tracking particles and micro-sized vortex rings could form bound states (denoted here as VRP states). While a comprehensive description of the vortex ring-particle bonding mechanism has to deal with somewhat involved flo…
A relative motion of the normal and superfluid components of Helium II results in Kelvin-Helmholtz instability (KHI) at their common free surface. We found the exact solutions for the nonlinear stage of the development of that instability. Contrary to the usual KHI of the interface between two fluids, the dynamics of Helium II free surface allows decoupling of the governing equations with their reduction to the Laplace growth equation which has the infinite number of exact solutions including the formation of sharp cusps at free surface in a finite time.
We use pseudospectral direct numerical simulations (DNSs) to solve the three-dimensional (3D) Hall-Vinen-Bekharevich-Khalatnikov (HVBK) model of superfluid Helium. We then explore the statistical properties of inertial particles, in both coflow and counterflow superfluid turbulence (ST) in the 3D HVBK system; particle motion is governed by a generalization of the Maxey-Riley-Gatignol equations. We first characterize the anisotropy of counterflow ST by showing that there exist large vortical columns. The light particles show confined motion as they are attracted towards these columns and they f…
We perform a numerical analysis of superfluid turbulence produced by thermal counterflow in He II by using the vortex filament model. Counterflow in a low aspect ratio channel is known to show the transition from laminar flow to the two turbulent states TI and TII. The present understanding is that the TI has the turbulent superfluid and the laminar normal fluid but both fluids are turbulent in the TII state. This work studies the vortex tangle in the TI state. Solid boundary condition is applied to walls of a square channel, and the velocity field of the normal fluid is prescribed to be a lam…
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 coupled dynamics of quantum turbulence (QT) and normal-fluid turbulence (NFT) have been a central challenge in quantum hydrodynamics, since it is expected to cause the unsolved T2 state of QT. We numerically studied the coupled dynamics of the two turbulences in thermal counterflow. NFT is driven by external forces to control its turbulent intensity, and the fast multipole method accelerates the calculation of QT. We show that NFT enhances QT via mutual friction. The vortex line density $L$ of the QT satisfies the statistical law $L^{1/2} \approx γV_{ns}$ with the counterflow velocity $V_{…
The problem of quantum turbulence in a channel with an inhomogeneous counterflow of superfluid turbulent helium is studied. \ The counterflow velocity $V_{ns}^{x}(y)$ along the channel is supposed to have a parabolic profile in the transverse direction $y$. Such statement corresponds to the recent numerical simulation by Khomenko et al. [Phys. Rev. B \textbf{91}, 180504 (2015)]. The authors reported about a sophisticated behavior of the vortex line density (VLD) $\mathcal{L}(\mathbf{r},t)$, different from $% \mathcal{L}\propto V_{ns}^{x}(y)^{2}$, which follows from the naive, straightforward a…
New methods of flow visualization near absolute zero have opened the way to directly compare quantum turbulence (in superfluid helium) to classical turbulence (in ordinary fluids such as air or water) and explore analogies and differences. We present results of numerical simulations in which we examine the statistics of the superfluid acceleration in thermal counterflow. We find that, unlike the velocity, the acceleration obeys scaling laws similar to classical turbulence, in agreement with a recent quantum turbulence experiment of La Mantia et al.
We investigate the coupled dynamics of quantized vortices and normal fluid in superfluid $^4$He at finite temperatures using a numerical approach based on the vortex filament model (VFM) and lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The LBM allows us to simulate a fluid flow with only local operations, i .e., rather than solving the Navier--Stokes (NS) equations directly; a fluid flow is considered a convection of mesoscopic particles between sites on a lattice grid. Although the two-fluid nature of He II makes its flow complex, the particle-like treatment of the normal fluid in the LBM significantly re…
We report observation of an inverse energy cascade in second sound acoustic turbulence in He II. Its onset occurs above a critical driving energy and it is accompanied by giant waves that constitute an acoustic analogue of the rogue waves that occasionally appear on the surface of the ocean. The theory of the phenomenon is developed and shown to be in good agreement with the experiments.
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…
To explain the observed decay of superfluid turbulence at very low temperature, it has been proposed that a cascade of Kelvin waves (analogous to the classical Kolmogorov cascade) transfers kinetic energy to length scales which are small enough that sound can be radiated away. We report results of numerical simulations of the interaction of quantized vortex filaments. We observe the development of the Kelvin-waves cascade, and compute the statistics of the curvature, the amplitude spectrum (which we compare with competing theories) and the fractal dimension.
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 present the first direct-numerical-simulation study of the statistical properties of two-dimensional superfluid turbulence in the Hall-Vinen-Bekharevich-Khalatnikov two-fluid model. We show that both normal-fluid and superfluid energy spectra can exhibit two power-law regimes, the first associated with an inverse cascade of energy and the second with the forward cascade of enstrophy. We quantify the mutual-friction-induced alignment of normal and superfluid velocities by obtaining probability distribution functions of the angle between them and the ratio of their moduli. Our study leads to …
We suggest a "minimal model" for the 3D turbulent energy spectra in superfluids, based on their two-fluid description. We start from the Navier-Stokes equation for the normal fluid and from the coarse-grained hydrodynamic equation for the superfluid component (obtained from the Euler equation for the superfluid velocity after averaging over the vortex lines) and introduce a mutual friction coupling term, proportional to the counterflow velocity, the average superfluid vorticity and to the temperature dependent parameter $q=α/(1+α')$, where $α$ and $α'$ denote the dimensionless parameters chara…
The 4/5-law of turbulence, which characterizes the energy cascade from large to small-sized eddies at high Reynolds numbers in classical fluids, is verified experimentally in a superfluid 4He wind tunnel, operated down to 1.56 K and up to R_lambda ~ 1640. The result is corroborated by high-resolution simulations of Landau-Tisza's two-fluid model down to 1.15 K, corresponding to a residual normal fluid concentration below 3 % but with a lower Reynolds number of order R_lambda ~ 100. Although the Kármán-Howarth equation (including a viscous term) is not valid \emph{a priori} in a superfluid, it …
Experiments and numerical simulations of turbulent $^4$He and $^3$He-B have established that, at hydrodynamic length scales larger than the average distance between quantum vortices, the energy spectrum obeys the same 5/3 Kolmogorov law which is observed in the homogeneous isotropic turbulence of ordinary fluids. The importance of the 5/3 law is that it points to the existence of a Richardson energy cascade from large eddies to small eddies. However, there is also evidence of quantum turbulent regimes without Kolmogorov scaling. This raises the important questions of why, in such regimes, the …
Dissipating of disorder quantum vortices in an annular two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate can form a macroscopic persistent flow of atoms. We propose a protocol to create persistent flow with high winding number based on a double concentric ring-shaped configuration. We find that a sudden geometric quench of the trap from single ring-shape into double concentric ring-shape will enhance the circulation flow in the outer ring-shaped region of the trap when the initial state of the condensate is with randomly distributed vortices of the same charge. The circulation flows that we created are…
We consider superfluid turbulence near absolute zero of temperature generated by classical means, e.g. towed grid or rotation but not by counterflow. We argue that such turbulence consists of a {\em polarized} tangle of mutually interacting vortex filaments with quantized vorticity. For this system we predict and describe a bottleneck accumulation of the energy spectrum at the classical-quantum crossover scale $\ell$. Demanding the same energy flux through scales, the value of the energy at the crossover scale should exceed the Kolmogorov-41 spectrum by a large factor $\ln^{10/3} (\ell/a_0)$ (…
There is a fundamental connection between temperature-quenched 2D superfluids and 2D quantum turbulence: the mechanism responsible for the decay of the vorticity after the quench is the enstrophy cascade of 2D turbulence. The range of the cascade is shown to increase with time after the quench as $t^{1/2}$, being equal to the dynamic scaling length characterizing the quench. These results may apply to other phase-ordering transitions involving the decay of topological objects.
The interiors of mature neutron stars are expected to be superfluid. Superfluidity of matter on the microscopic scale can have a number of large scale, potentially observable consequences, as the superfluid component of the star can now flow relative to the `normal' component that is tracked by electromagnetic emission. The most spectacular of such phenomena are pulsar glitches, sudden spin-ups observed in many pulsars. A background flow of a normal-fluid component with respect to the superfluid is also known to lead to a number of instabilities in laboratory superfluids, possibly leading to t…
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…
We argue that turbulence in superfluids is governed by two dimensionless parameters. One of them is the intrinsic parameter q which characterizes the friction forces acting on a vortex moving with respect to the heat bath, with 1/q playing the same role as the Reynolds number Re=UR/νin classical hydrodynamics. It marks the transition between the "laminar" and turbulent regimes of vortex dynamics. The developed turbulence described by Kolmogorov cascade occurs when Re >> 1 in classical hydrodynamics, and q << 1 in the superfluid hydrodynamics. Another parameter of the superfluid turbulence is t…
Superfluid turbulence is governed by two dimensionless parameters. One of them is the intrinsic parameter q which characterizes the relative value of the friction force acting on a vortex with respect to the non-dissipative forces. The inverse parameter 1/q plays the same role as the Reynolds number Re=UR/νin classical hydrodynamics. It marks the transition between the "laminar" and turbulent regimes of vortex dynamics. The developed turbulence, described by a Kolmogorov cascade, occurs when Re >> 1 in classical hydrodynamics. In superfluids, the developed turbulence occurs at q << 1. Another …
The forward enstrophy cascade in two-dimensional quantum turbulence in a superfluid film connected to a thermal bath is investigated using a Fokker-Planck equation based on Kosterlitz-Thouless renormalization. The steady-state cascade is formed by injecting vortex pairs of large initial separation at a constant rate. They diffuse with a constant flux to smaller scales, finally annihilating when reaching the core size. The energy spectrum varies as $k^{-3}$, similar to the spectrum known for 2D classical-fluid enstrophy cascades. The dynamics of the cascade can also be studied, and for the case…
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…
Superfluid helium consists of two inter-penetrating fluids, a viscous normal fluid and an inviscid superfluid, coupled by a mutual friction. We develop a two-fluid shell model to study superfluid turbulence. We investigate the energy spectra and the balance of fluxes between the two fluids as a function of temperature in continuously forced turbulence, and, in the absence of forcing, the decay of turbulence. We furthermore investigate deviations from the $k^{-5/3}$ spectrum caused by the mutual friction force. We compare our results with experiments and existing calculations. We find that, at …
The results of experimental and theoretical studies of the parametric decay instability of capillary waves on the surface of superfluid helium He-II are reported. It is demonstrated that in a system of turbulent capillary waves low-frequency waves are generated along with the direct Kolmogorov-Zakharov cascade of capillary turbulence. The effects of low-frequency damping and the discreteness of the wave spectrum are discussed.
A commonplace view of pressure-driven turbulence in pipes and channels is as "cascades" of streamwise momentum toward the viscous layer at the wall. We present in this paper an alternative picture of these flows as "inverse cascades" of spanwise vorticity, in the cross-stream direction but away from the viscous sublayer. We show that there is a constant spatial flux of spanwise vorticity, due to vorticity conservation, and that this flux is necessary to produce pressure-drop and energy dissipation. The vorticity transport is shown to be dominated by viscous diffusion at distances closer to the…
The intermittency of turbulent superfluid helium is explored systematically in a steady wake flow from 1.28 K up to T>2.18K using a local anemometer. This temperature range spans relative densities of superfluid from 96% down to 0%, allowing to test numerical predictions of enhancement or depletion of intermittency at intermediate superfluid fractions. Using the so-called extended self-similarity method, scaling exponents of structure functions have been calculated. No evidence of temperature dependence is found on these scaling exponents in the upper part of the inertial cascade, where turbul…
We present velocity spectra measured in three cryogenic liquid 4He steady flows: grid and wake flows in a pressurized wind tunnel capable of achieving mean velocities up to 5 m/s at temperatures above and below the superfluid transition, down to 1.7 K, and a "chunk" turbulence flow at 1.55 K, capable of sustaining mean superfluid velocities up to 1.3 m/s. Depending on the flows, the stagnation pressure probes used for anemometry are resolving from one to two decades of the inertial regime of the turbulent cascade. We do not find any evidence that the second order statistics of turbulence below…
