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Helicity in superfluids: Existence and the classical limit

Hridesh Kedia1,*, Dustin Kleckner1,†, Martin W. Scheeler1, and William T. M. Irvine2,‡

  • 1James Franck Institute and Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, 929 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA
  • 2James Franck Institute, Enrico Fermi Institute and Department of Physics, The University of Chicago, 929 East 57th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637, USA

  • *Present address: Physics of Living Systems Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA.
  • †Present address: University of California, Merced, 5200 North Lake Road Merced, California 95343, USA.
  • ‡wtmirvine@uchicago.edu
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Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 104702 – Published 18 October, 2018

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevFluids.3.104702

Abstract

In addition to mass, energy, and momentum, classical dissipationless flows conserve helicity, a measure of the topology of the flow. Helicity has far-reaching consequences for classical flows from Newtonian fluids to plasmas. Since superfluids flow without dissipation, a fundamental question is whether such a conserved quantity exists for superfluid flows. We address the existence of a “superfluid helicity” using an analytical approach based on the symmetry underlying classical helicity conservation: the particle relabeling symmetry. Furthermore, we use numerical simulations to study whether bundles of superfluid vortices which approximate the structure of a classical vortex recover the conservation of classical helicity and we find dynamics consistent with classical vortices in a viscous fluid.

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Phys. Rev. Fluids 3, 104702– Published 18 October, 2018
  • Received 25 April 2017
Article part of CHORUS
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