arXiv · 1405.3399
Emergence of order from turbulence in an isolated planar superfluid
Abstract
We study the relaxation dynamics of an isolated zero temperature quasi-two-dimensional superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) that is imprinted with a spatially random distribution of quantum vortices. Following a period of vortex annihilation, we find that the remaining vortices self-organise into two macroscopic coherent `Onsager vortex' clusters that are stable indefinitely. We demonstrate that this occurs due to a novel physical mechanism --- the evaporative heating of the vortices --- that results in a negative temperature phase transition in the vortex degrees of freedom. At the end of our simulations the system is trapped in a non-thermal state. Our computational results provide a pathway to observing Onsager vortex states in a superfluid Bose gas.
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Tapio Simula, Matthew J. Davis, Kristian Helmerson. 2014-05-14. Emergence of order from turbulence in an isolated planar superfluid. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.113.165302
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