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Experimental and theoretical evidence of universality in superfluid vortex reconnections

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Peter Stasiak, Professor Carlo Barenghi, Dr Andrew BaggaleyORCiD, Dr Luca Galantucci

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Abstract

Copyright © 2025 the Author(s).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.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Stasiak PZ, Xing Y, Alihosseini Y, Barenghi CF, Baggaley A, Guo W, Galantucci L, Krstulovic G

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Year: 2025

Volume: 122

Issue: 21

Print publication date: 27/05/2025

Online publication date: 22/05/2025

Acceptance date: 09/04/2025

Date deposited: 09/06/2025

ISSN (print): 0027-8424

ISSN (electronic): 1091-6490

Publisher: National Academy of Sciences

URL: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2426064122

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2426064122

PubMed id: 40402248

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