Vortex motion quantifies strong dissipation in a holographic superfluid

TL;DR

This paper uses holographic duality to analyze vortex motion in a strongly dissipative superfluid, matching simulations with theoretical models to determine physical parameters and suggest experimental relevance.

Contribution

It provides a quantitative method to extract dissipation parameters of holographic superfluids by comparing vortex dynamics with classical equations.

Findings

Excellent agreement between holographic simulations and Gross-Pitaevskii dynamics.

Determined friction parameters for the holographic superfluid.

Suggests applicability to experimental superfluids like ultracold gases and helium films.

Abstract

Holographic duality provides a description of strongly coupled quantum systems in terms of weakly coupled gravitational theories in a higher-dimensional space. It is a challenge, however, to quantitatively determine the physical parameters of the quantum systems corresponding to generic holographic theories. Here, we address this problem for the two-dimensional holographic superfluid, known to exhibit strong dissipation. We numerically simulate the motion of a vortex dipole and perform a high-precision matching of the corresponding dynamics resulting from the dissipative Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Excellent agreement is found for the vortex core shape and the spatio-temporal trajectories. A further comparison to the Hall-Vinen-Iordanskii equations for point vortices interacting with the superfluid allows us to determine the friction parameters of the holographic superfluid. Our results suggest that holographic vortex dynamics can be applied to experimentally accessible superfluids like strongly coupled ultracold Bose gases or thin helium films with temperatures in the Kelvin range. This would make holographic far-from-equilibrium dynamics and turbulence amenable to experimental tests.