Experimental and theoretical evidence of universality in superfluid vortex reconnections
The minimum separation between reconnecting vortices in fluids and superfluids obeys a universal scaling law with respect to time. The prereconnection and the postreconnection prefactors of this scaling law are different, a property related to irreversibility and to energy transfer and dissipation mechanisms. In the present work, we determine the temperature dependence of these prefactors in superfluid helium from experiments and a numeric model which fully accounts for the coupled dynamics of the superfluid vortex lines and the thermal normal fluid component. At all temperatures, we observe a pre- and postreconnection asymmetry similar to that observed in other superfluids and in classical viscous fluids, indicating that vortex reconnections display a universal behavior independent of the small-scale regularizing dynamics. We also numerically show that each vortex reconnection event represents a sudden injection of energy in the normal fluid. Finally we argue that in a turbulent flow, these punctuated energy injections can sustain the normal fluid in a perturbed state, provided that the density of superfluid vortices is large enough.
Authors
- Yousef Alihosseini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6570-4330)
- Yiming Xing (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0755-3938)
- Andrew W. Baggaley (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6813-2443)
- Piotr Z. Stasiak (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-5199-0317)
- Carlo F. Barenghi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4908-7341)
- Wei Guo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9466-3213)
- Luca Galantucci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3435-4259)
- Giorgio Krstulovic (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9934-6292)
Institutions
- Florida State University (US)
- Université Côte d'Azur (FR)
- Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo Mauro Picone (IT)
- Lagrange Laboratory (FR)
- Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur (FR)
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (US)
- Lancaster University (GB)
- Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (US)
- Newcastle University (GB)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Published
- 2025-05-22
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2426064122
- Citations
- 2
- Primary Topic
- Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.49
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Florida State University
- National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
- Agence Nationale de la Recherche
- Division of Materials Research
- High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Chinese Academy of Sciences