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Physical Review Letters

Spatial Distribution of Superfluid Vortices

D. Scott Shenk, James B. Mehl

Published Dec 20, 1971• 13 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We report accurate measurements of the increase, due to rotation, of the attenuation of second sound in an annulus. The measurements can be explained in detail by a vortex-free-region model in close agreement with theory, assuming a vortex-core parameter of 10 \AA{} at 1.65 K. The range of agreement extends from the vorticity threshold to relatively high angular velocities.

DOI
10.1103/physrevlett.27.1703

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We report accurate measurements of the increase, due to rotation, of the attenuation of second sound in an annulus. The measurements can be explained in detail by a vortex-free-region model in close agreement with theory, assuming a vortex-core parameter of 10 \AA{} at 1.65 K. The range of agreement extends from the vorticity threshold to relatively high angular velocities.
We study a superfluid in a rotating anharmonic trap and explicate a rigorous proof of a transition from a vortex lattice to a giant vortex state as the rotation is increased beyond a limiting speed determined by the interaction strength. The transition is characterized by the disappearance of the vortices from the annulus where the bulk of the superfluid is concentrated due to centrifugal forces while a macroscopic phase circulation remains. The analysis is carried out within two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii theory at large coupling constant and reveals significant differences between ``soft'' anharmonic traps (like a quartic plus quadratic trapping potential) and traps with a fixed boundary: in the latter case the transition takes place in a parameter regime where the size of vortices is very small relative to the width of the annulus, whereas in soft traps the vortex lattice persists until the width of the annulus becomes comparable to the vortex cores. Moreover, the density profile in the annulus where the bulk is concentrated is, in the soft case, approximately Gaussian with long tails and not of the Thomas-Fermi type like in a trap with a fixed boundary.
We report on the first mathematically rigorous proofs of a transition to a giant vortex state of a superfluid in rotating anharmonic traps. The analysis is carried out within two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii theory at large coupling constant and large rotational velocity and is based on precise asymptotic estimates on the ground state energy. An interesting aspect is a significant difference between 'soft' anharmonic traps (like a quartic plus quadratic trapping potential) and traps with a fixed boundary. In the former case vortices persist in the bulk until the width of the annulus becomes comparable to the size of the vortex cores. In the second case the transition already takes place in a parameter regime where the size of vortices is very small relative to the width of the annulus. Moreover, the density profiles in the annulus are different in the two cases. In both cases rotational symmetry of the density in a true ground state is broken, even though a symmetric variational ansatz gives an excellent approximation to the energy.
We report on the first mathematically rigorous proofs of a transition to a giant vortex state of a superfluid in rotating anharmonic traps. The analysis is carried out within two-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii theory at large coupling constant and large rotational velocity and is based on precise asymptotic estimates on the ground state energy. An interesting aspect is a significant difference between 'soft' anharmonic traps (like a quartic plus quadratic trapping potential) and traps with a fixed boundary. In the former case vortices persist in the bulk until the width of the annulus becomes comparable to the size of the vortex cores. In the second case the transition already takes place in a parameter regime where the size of vortices is very small relative to the width of the annulus. Moreover, the density profiles in the annulus are different in the two cases. In both cases rotational symmetry of the density in a true ground state is broken, even though a symmetric variational ansatz gives an excellent approximation to the energy.
Rotation of superfluid 3B^{3}\mathit{B}3B in an magnetic field enhances the coupling of the nonzero mJ{\mathrm{m}}_{\mathrm{J}}mJ​ substrates of the real squashing collective mode to the zero sound, and the fivefold line splitting becomes observable even when H is parallel to \ensuremath{\Omega} and to the direction of sound propagation. Equilibrium vortex lattices and vortex-free states can be distinguished by their characteristic absorption spectra. The dependence of the sound attenuation on the angular velocity in magnetic fields up to 32 mT is reported; the data are qualitatively compared with theory.