Abstract The interaction of ions and quantized vortex lines in helium II is treated by imagining that the motion of the superfluid near a vortex line acts on an ion so as to produce a potential well. The ion itself is looked upon as a Brownian particle immersed in a gas of quasi-particles. The capture of ions is pictured as a process of sedimentation into the well. The escape of the ions from the well is treated as a problem of the escape of a Brownian particle over a potential barrier. A solution of the Fokker-Planck equation for a two-dimensional well is given. Comparison of the theory with a variety of experiments is presented.
Motivated by the recent successes of particle models in capturing the precession and interactions of vortex structures in quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensates, we revisit the relevant systems of ordinary differential equations. We consider the number of vortices N as a parameter and explore the prototypical configurations (‘ground states’) that arise in the case of few or many vortices. In the case of few vortices, we modify the classical result illustrating that vortex polygons in the form of a ring are unstable for N ≥7. Additionally, we reconcile this modification with the recent identification of symmetry-breaking bifurcations for the cases of N =2,…,5. We also briefly discuss the case of a ring of vortices surrounding a central vortex (so-called N +1 configuration). We finally examine the opposite limit of large N and illustrate how a coarse-graining, continuum approach enables the accurate identification of the radial distribution of vortices in that limit.
We smoothly tune the dimensionality of pancake-shaped
6Li Fermi gas clouds from quasi-two-dimensional to two-dimensional (2D) to measure radio-frequency spectra and cloud profiles in both regimes. In the quasi-2D case, where ${E}_{F}/h{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{z}\ensuremath{\simeq}1$, with
EF the Fermi energy and $h{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{z}$ the harmonic oscillator energy in the tightly confined direction, we confirm that the radio-frequency spectra strongly disagree with 2D mean-field theory. Then we tune to the 2D regime, ${E}_{F}<<h{\ensuremath{\nu}}_{z}$, where the measured radio-frequency spectra are in very good agreement with 2D mean-field theory. Nevertheless, the measured cloud profiles strongly disagree, confirming predictions that a beyond mean-field approach is required throughout the 2D to quasi-2D crossover.