Supplementary Material for Physical Review Letter: Electronic Physics Auxiliary Publication Service (EPAPS)

Superuid turbulence from quantum Kelvin wave to classical Kolmogorov cascades

Jerey Yepez1 , George Vahala2 , Linda Vahala3 , Min Soe4
1 2

Air Force Research Laboratory, Hanscom Air Force Base, Massachusetts 01731 Department of Physics, William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia 23185 3 Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA 23529 4 Department of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, Rogers State University, Claremore, OK 74017

I. QUADRUPOLAR CONFIGURATION OF 4 QUANTUM VORTICES

A simple initial condition that ensures periodicity is four symmetrically displaced vortex line solitons (parallel to the z-axis for the time being) in product form (Nore et al., 1997) (x, y) = (r++ )ei++ (r+ )ei+ (r+ )ei+ (r )ei
i(++ + + + )

(1a) (1b)

= (r++ )(r+ )(r+ )(r )e r++ (x, y) = (x x + )2 + (y y + )2 r+ (x, y) = (x x )2 + (y y + )2

where the radial distance from a linear quantum vortex along the z-axis is r+ (x, y) = (x x + )2 + (y y )2 r (x, y) = (x x )2 + (y y )2 . (2)

The size of the quantum vortex quadrupole is |2|, its overall center is (x , y ), and we dene its polarity to be sign() = 1. The phase angles are y y + x x y y + (x, y) = arctan x x + ++ (x, y) = arctan y y + x x y y (x, y) = arctan . x x + (x, y) = arctan

(3)

The magnitude and phase of (1) are plotted in Fig. 1 with = L and a = 0.1 and L = 160, demonstrating the 4 periodicity of (1). We shall use such quantum vortex quadrupole congurations aligned along orthogonal principal lattice direction to represent initial conditions for numerical simulations.

(x, y, z ) (top, upside down) and phase (x, y, z ) (middle) and phase contours (bottom) of the wave function for a quantum vortex quadrupole, the product of 4 quantum vortex solutions on a grid of size L = 160. The density p (x, y) = |(x, y)|2 and so (x, y, z ) 1 away from a vortex core (in the bulk). From the phase diagram, plotted (x, y, z ) , going around any contour in the z = z plane that encloses a single vortex singularity accumulates a phase of 2 radians. With N = 4 line vortices one can accommodate periodic boundary conditions in the phase.

FIG. 1 A slice at z = z of the magnitude

II. QUANTUM KELVIN WAVES AND INTERMEDIATE VORTEX LOOP

Products of quadrupolar line solitons depicted in Fig. 1 may be shifted or rotated about any direction to build up more complicated initial conditions, which nevertheless retain periodicity.

2 A simulation of two orthogonally oriented quantum vortex quadrupoles is shown in Fig. 1 (for a total of N = 8 vortex lines) on a 10243 grid (Yepez et al., 2009b). In this superuid simulation, transverse vortex waves (helical perturbations of the vortex tube away from its cylindrical shape) known as quantum Kelvin waves occur very early on. The lamentary cores kink into a horseshoe shape, and then emit closed-loop vortex solitons that mediate the force between the larger vortex laments. An expanded view of an emitted vortex loop is shown in Fig. 3.

FIG. 2 Simulation of vortex and anti-vortex laments, originally linear and oriented perpendicularly on a 10243 grid. Time steps
t = 1200t and t = 4800t are plotted. Quantum Kelvin waves are seen along the vortex laments early in the simulation. At the late stages, the laments bend, reconnect, and exchange vortex rings.

t = 5746

4
intermediate vortex ring

FIG. 3 Spontaneous exchange of a vortex loop mediating a force between two orthogonally-oriented and separate vortex laments. The
exchange goes in both directions. This image is a small section of a 10243 space computed with thousands of processors. Zoom-in online to see cuts in the vorticity isosurface that are inter-processor boundaries.

3
III. KINETIC, QUANTUM, AND INTERNAL ENERGY

One decomposes the conserved energy into its kinetic, quantum and internal energy parts (Nore et al., 1997), as follows Etot = Ekin + Equ + Eint = const. Ekin , Equ , Eint = where Ekin = Equ Eint 1 4 1 = 4 1 = 2 2 d3 x ( v) , d3 x (2 d3 x 2 . ) ,
2

1 4

2 2 d3 x ( v) , (2 ) , 22 ,

(4)

(5a) (5b) (5c)

Computationally, one rst computes the vector eld A= and then determines 2
IV. POINCARE RECURRENCE

2 ||2

(6)

= Re[A],

v = Im[A]

with 2 = ||4 .

(7)

In Hamiltonian systems, the dynamics must be invertible. It is possible to observe Poincar recurrence in simulations e of superuid ow (Yepez et al., 2009a). For special initial conditions it is possible to observe a reverse cascade, and on time scales shorter than otherwise expected; vortex tubes untangle and reform by the absorption of sound waves to recover a conguration close to a conguration that occurred earlier in time in the ow. Recursion arising from the Hamiltonian system is observed in animations of the ow. This occurs in the limit of vanishing nonlinear interaction, g 0, the vortex solitons completely untangle, as evidenced in Fig. 4 (by t = 21K), when the internal energy in (4) satises Eint Ekin , Equ . Surprisingly in 3+1 dimensions, the Poincar recursion time for the Gross-Pitaevskii e equation can be extremely short.

V. REMARKS

1. The Yepez quantum algorithm for superuids admits quantum vortices with vanishing number density at the core center. 2. Each quantum vortex has discrete circulation = n, for integer n, which is a topological defect in the phase of the bosonic complex scalar eld . 3. Multi-connected condensate wave function with integer winding number serves as an eective vacuum conguration for excitations, such as phonons. 4. The quantum coherence length is a good physical estimate of the inner radius of a quantum vortex core. Within this scale, one observes quantum Kelvin modes. There is also an outer radius of the quantum vortex that is about a factor of larger than the coherence length. These two lengths correspond to the bends in the incomp spectral plot of EK.E. (k). 5. We dened two wave number scales, called kinner and kouter . 6. kinner and kouter correspond to the bends in the spectral plots, demarcating the k-space boundaries between the three important cascade regions.

FIG. 4 Starting with N = 12 perfectly straight quantum vortex lines on a 5123 lattice, the quantum vortex cores at t = 200K (top
left) show an onset of a Kelvin wave instability. Tangled quantum vortices are observed, even when Hint 0, at t = 3.3K (top right). Remarkably, one observes many vortex rings mediating the vortex line-line interactions. At t = 11K (bottom left) is highly tangled but closer to a spherically symmetric conguration. This is just over half-way through the recurrence cycle. There are markedly dierent tangled congurations every few hundred time steps. Untangled vortices are observed t = 21K (bottom right). The inital state recurs after a turbulent state. An ordered state at t = 21K deterministically returns to the initial state untangling turbulence, a cascade that cycles at intervals of tP = 21K.

7. For an L3 grid, the transitional wave numbers scale as follows: kinner kouter 3L 2 3 L . 2 (8a) (8b)

The resolution limit of the calculation is set by the unit lattice size a = 1: kcutoff = 3 L . 2 1.0 (9)

5 These three wave numbers are shown in Fig. 5 for a cubical grid of size L = 2048.
t 20000 1012 1010 108 106 104 100 1

Einc , Ecomp

10

50 k

100

500

1000

FIG. 5 L = 2048 energy spectra for incompressible (red) and compressible (blue) kinetic energy at time step t = 20000. The double vertical green line is kouter = 56 and the vertical red line is kinner = 177, and the single vertical green line is kcutoff = 1773.

8. The prefactor of 3 above comes from 2 the Fourier transform.

2 2 2 kx + ky + kz =

3 k. The factor of 1/2 comes from the periodicity of

9. kcutoff is the phonon emission limit. This ultraviolet cuto moves to the right with increasing L e.g. kcutoff = 1773, 2660, 4988 for L = 2048, 3072, 5760 respectively. 10. Expressing the critical wave numbers in terms of the lattice size L and the inverse of the coherence length allows for a physical interpretation of these characteristic scales. 11. All the uid dynamics on scales is eectively classical incompressible viscous hydrodynamics.

References Nore, C., M. Abid, and M. E. Brachet, 1997, Physics of Fluids 9(9), 2644, URL http://link.aip.org/link/?PHF/9/2644/1. Yepez, J., G. Vahala, and L. Vahala, 2009a (SPIE), 7342, p. 73420M, URL http://link.aip.org/link/?PSI/7342/73420M/1. Yepez, J., G. Vahala, and L. Vahala, 2009b, Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 171, 9.