Experimental and theoretical evidence of universality in superfluid vortex reconnections

Journal Article · Thu May 22 00:00:00 EDT 2025 · Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2426064122· OSTI ID:3009197

Stasiak, Piotr Z. ^[1]; Xing, Yiming ^[2]; Alihosseini, Yousef ^[2]; Barenghi, Carlo F. ^[1]; Baggaley, Andrew ^[3]; Guo, Wei ^[2]; Galantucci, Luca ^[4]; Krstulovic, Giorgio ^[5]

---

1. Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom)
2. National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee, FL (United States); Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (United States)
3. Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom); Lancaster University (United Kingdom)
4. Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (United Kingdom); Istituto per le Applicazioni del Calcolo “Mauro Picone” - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma (Italy)
5. Université Côte d’Azur (France)

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.

• Research Organization: Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE
• Grant/Contract Number: SC0020113
• Other Award/Contract Number: DMR-2128556; ANR-23-CE30-0024-02
• OSTI ID: 3009197
• Journal Information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Journal Name: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America Journal Issue: 21 Vol. 122; ISSN 1091-6490; ISSN 0027-8424
• Publisher: National Academy of Sciences
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

Reconnections
Superfluids
Turbulence
Vortices