Diffusion of Inhomogeneous Vortex Tangle and Decay of Superfluid Turbulence

TL;DR

This paper develops a kinetic theory for inhomogeneous vortex tangles in superfluid turbulence, deriving a diffusion equation for vortex line density and explaining decay phenomena at very low temperatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel kinetic model based on vortex loop lengths and derives a diffusion equation for vortex line density in inhomogeneous superfluid turbulence.

Findings

Derived a diffusion equation for vortex line density.

Calculated the diffusion coefficient from vortex loop size distribution.

Compared theoretical decay with experimental observations.

Abstract

The theory describing the evolution of inhomogeneous vortex tangle at zero temperature is developed on the bases of kinetics of merging and splitting vortex loops. Vortex loops composing the vortex tangle can move as a whole with some drift velocity depending on their structure and their length. The flux of length, energy, momentum etc. executed by the moving vortex loops takes a place. Situation here is exactly the same as in usual classical kinetic theory with the difference that the "carriers" of various physical quantities are not the point particles, but extended objects (vortex loops), which possess an infinite number of degrees of freedom with very involved dynamics. We offer to fulfill investigation basing on supposition that vortex loops have a Brownian structure with the only degree of freedom, namely, lengths of loops $l$. This conception allows us to study dynamics of the vortex tangle on the basis of the kinetic equation for the distribution function $n(l,t)$ of the density of a loop in the space of their lengths. Imposing the coordinate dependence on the distribution function $n(l,\mathbf{% r},t)$ and modifying the "kinetic" equation with regard to inhomogeneous situation, we are able to investigate various problem on the transport processes in superfluid turbulence. In this paper we derive relation for the flux of the vortex line density $\mathcal{L}(x,t)$. The correspoding evolution of quantity $\mathcal{L}(x,t)$ obeys the diffusion type equation as it can be expected from dimensional analysis. The according diffusion coefficient is evaluated from calculation of the (size dependent) free path of the vortex loops. We use this equation to describe the decay of the vortex tangle at very low temperature. We compare that solution with recent experiments on decay of the superfluid turbulence.