Shear-Induced Decaying Turbulence in Bose-Einstein Condensates

TL;DR

This paper investigates how shear-induced turbulence forms and decays in Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing vortex clustering behavior and modeling the decay dynamics with numerical simulations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of vortex clustering and decay in BEC turbulence, supported by experimental data and a point vortex model including damping and noise.

Findings

Vortex clusters follow a power law decay over time

Experimental data aligns with the point vortex model

Power-law exponent converges with increasing vortex number

Abstract

We study the creation and breakdown of a quantized vortex shear layer forming between a stationary Bose-Einstein condensate and a stirred-in persistent current. Once turbulence is established, we characterize the progressive clustering of the vortices, showing that the cluster number follows a power law decay with time, similar to decaying turbulence in other two-dimensional systems. Numerical study of the system demonstrates good agreement of the experimental data with a point vortex model that includes damping and noise. With increasing vortex number in the computational model, we observe a convergence of the power-law exponent to a fixed value.