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arXiv:cond-mat/9812438

Cyclotron motion of a quantized vortex in a superfluid

Jian‐Ming Tang

Published Dec 31, 1998• 0 citations
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Abstract

In two dimensions a microscopic theory providing a basis for the naive analogy between a quantized vortex in a superfluid and an electron in a uniform magnetic field is presented. Following the variational approach developed by Peierls, Yoccoz, and Thouless, the cyclotron motion of a vortex is described by the many-body wave function, which is a linear combination of Feynman wave functions centered at different positions. An integral equation for the weighting functions of the superposition is derived by minimizing the energy functional. The matrix elements of the kernel are the overlaps between any two displaced Feynman wave functions. A numerical study is conducted for a bosonic superfluid based on a Hartree ground state. A one-to-one correspondence between the rotational states of a vortex in a cylinder and the cyclotron states of an electron in the central gauge is found. Like the Landau levels of an electron, the energy levels of a vortex are highly degenerate. However, the gap between two adjacent energy levels does not only depend on the quantized circulation, but also increases with energy, and scales with the size of the vortex. The fluid density is finite at the vortex axis and the vorticity is distributed in the core region. The effective mass of a quantized vortex defined by the inverse of the energy-level spacing is shown to be logarithmically divergent with the size of the vortex.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/9812438

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In two dimensions a microscopic theory providing a basis for the naive analogy between a quantized vortex in a superfluid and an electron in a uniform magnetic field is presented. Following the variational approach developed by Peierls, Yoccoz, and Thouless, the cyclotron motion of a vortex is described by the many-body wave function, which is a linear combination of Feynman wave functions centered at different positions. An integral equation for the weighting functions of the superposition is derived by minimizing the energy functional. The matrix elements of the kernel are the overlaps between any two displaced Feynman wave functions. A numerical study is conducted for a bosonic superfluid based on a Hartree ground state. A one-to-one correspondence between the rotational states of a vortex in a cylinder and the cyclotron states of an electron in the central gauge is found. Like the Landau levels of an electron, the energy levels of a vortex are highly degenerate. However, the gap between two adjacent energy levels does not only depend on the quantized circulation, but also increases with energy, and scales with the size of the vortex. The fluid density is finite at the vortex axis and the vorticity is distributed in the core region. The effective mass of a quantized vortex defined by the inverse of the energy-level spacing is shown to be logarithmically divergent with the size of the vortex.
In two dimensions the microscopic theory, which provides a basis for the naive analogy between a quantized vortex in a superfluid and an electron in an uniform magnetic field, is presented. A one-to-one correspondence between the rotational states of a vortex in a cylinder and the cyclotron states of an electron in the central gauge is found. Like the Landau levels of an electron, the energy levels of a vortex are highly degenerate. However, the gap between two adjacent energy levels does not only depend on the quantized circulation, but also increases with the energy, and scales with the size of the vortex.
Model many-body wave functions are constructed for a quantized vortex line and ring. The corresponding variational energies are calculated using an approximate integral equation derived by Percus and Yevick for classical fluids. The energy of the line is close to that found in the Hartree theory. However, the density distribution in the core region is markedly different, and the core size is somewhat smaller, being of the order of 1 \AA{}. The velocity of translation of the vortex ring is calculated by a new method, and excellent agreement is obtained with the experimental results of Rayfield and Reif. The condensed-state wave function is computed numerically, and it is found that in the core of the vortex there are about 20% fewer particles in the condensed state than in the zero-momentum state when the system is in equilibrium.
Superfluid vortex dynamics on an infinite cylinder differs significantly from that on a plane. The requirement that a condensate wave function be single valued upon once encircling the cylinder means that such a single vortex cannot remain stationary. Instead, it acquires one of a series of quantized translational velocities around the circumference, the simplest being $\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}\ensuremath{\hbar}/(2MR)$, with MMM the mass of the superfluid particles and RRR the radius of the cylinder. A generalization to a finite cylinder automatically includes these quantum-mechanical effects through the pairing of the single vortex and its image in either the top or bottom end of the surface. The dynamics of a single vortex on this surface provides a hydrodynamic analog of Laughlin pumping. The interaction energy for two vortices on an infinite cylinder is proportional to the classical stream function $\ensuremath{\chi}({\mathbit{r}}_{12})$, and it crosses over from logarithmic to linear when the intervortex separation ${\mathbit{r}}_{12}$ becomes larger than the cylinder radius. An appendix summarizes the connection to an earlier study of Ho and Huang for one or more vortices on an infinite cylinder. A second appendix reviews the topologically equivalent planar annulus, where such quantized vortex motion has no offset, but Laughlin pumping may be more accessible to experimental observation.
Vortex mass, which is the inertia of a quantum vortex, has never been observed in superfluids and is a long-standing problem in low-temperature physics. The impact of the mass is considered negligible in typical experiments with superfluid 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He. Recent developments of experimental techniques for manipulating quantum vortices in superfluid atomic gases have enabled us to test this problem more accurately. By introducing the vortex mass time and length as universal scales to many-body problems of massive quantum vortices, the theoretical description is formulated in the simplest manner and is universally applicable to different quantum fluids, including fermionic and multicomponent superfluids. There are two branches, the cyclotron and massless branches, for the circular motion of a pair of like-sign vortices. Finding a stable cyclotron branch for the motion of vortices is a clear evidence of vortex mass and superfluid $^{3}\mathrm{He}\text{\ensuremath{-}}\mathrm{B}$ is the specific example of a system where this phenomena could be observed. The impact of the mass on the massless branch is small but can be enhanced by taking the difference in the two-body dynamics of point vortices with different initial conditions. Our results imply that the vortex mass is a direct cause of the splitting instability of a doubly quantized vortex at absolute zero and that the vortex mass length characterizes the final state after the instability. It is also demonstrated that a pair of massive vortices with opposite circulations has a critical distance characterized by the vortex mass length, below which they are spontaneously annihilated without thermal fluctuations.
The microscopic structure of a quantized vortex core in 2D 4He^{4}\mathrm{He}4He is investigated using the fixed-phase approach. We present a general method to suggest new forms for the phase of a many-particle wave function. Starting from the Feynman phase, our scheme generates backflow corrections with qualitatively different properties than the starting Feynman vortex. We evaluate particle density, circulating current, core radius, and energy for an isolated vortex at zero temperature using Green's function Monte Carlo.
We calculate the overlap between two many-body wave functions for a superfluid film containing a vortex at shifted positions. Comparing the results to phenomenological theories, which treat vortices as point particles, we find that the results are consistent if the point-particle vortices are considered as under the action of the Magnus force and in weak interaction with sound waves of the superfluid. We are then able to resolve the disagreement concerning the effective mass of vortices, showing it is finite.