Vortex Nucleation Limited Mobility of Free Electron Bubbles in the Gross-Pitaevskii Model of a Superfluid

TL;DR

This study uses 3D simulations of a superfluid modeled by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation coupled with an electron wavefunction to analyze how vortex nucleation limits the mobility of free electron bubbles at zero temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed 3D simulation approach to study vortex nucleation effects on electron bubble mobility in superfluid helium, aligning with experimental data.

Findings

Vortex nucleation significantly limits electron bubble mobility.

Simulation results agree with experimental measurements.

Vortex dynamics are crucial for understanding superfluid ion transport.

Abstract

We study the motion of an electron bubble in the zero temperature limit where neither phonons nor rotons provide a significant contribution to the drag exerted on an ion moving within the superfluid. By using the Gross-Clark model, in which a Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the superfluid wavefunction is coupled to a Schr\"{o}dinger equation for the electron wavefunction, we study how vortex nucleation affects the measured drift velocity of the ion. We use parameters that give realistic values of the ratio of the radius of the bubble with respect to the healing length in superfluid $^4$He at a pressure of one bar. By performing fully 3D spatio-temporal simulations of the superfluid coupled to an electron, that is modelled within an adiabatic approximation and moving under the influence of an applied electric field, we are able to recover the key dynamics of the ion-vortex interactions that arise and the subsequent ion-vortex complexes that can form. Using the numerically computed drift velocity of the ion as a function of the applied electric field, we determine the vortex-nucleation limited mobility of the ion to recover values in reasonable agreement with measured data.