Connecting shear-flow and vortex array instabilities in annular atomic superfluids

Abstract

At the interface between two fluid layers in relative motion, infinitesimal fluctuations can be exponentially amplified, inducing vorticity and the breakdown of the laminar flow. This process, known as the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, is responsible for many familiar phenomena observed in the atmosphere and in the oceans, as well as in astrophysical objects, being known as one of the paradigmatic routes to turbulence in fluid mechanics. While shear-flow instabilities in classical fluids have been extensively observed in various contexts, controlled experiments in the presence of quantized circulation are comparatively very few. Here, we engineer two counter-rotating atomic superflows, a configuration that in classical inviscid fluids is unstable via the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability. We observe how the contact interface, i.e. the shear layer, develops into an ordered circular array of quantized vortices, which loses stability and rolls up into vortex clusters. We extract the instability growth rates and find that they obey the same scaling relations across different superfluid regimes, ranging from weakly-interacting bosonic to strongly-correlated fermionic pair condensates. The measured scalings, reproduced by numerical simulations and well described by a microscopic point-vortex model, are consistent with the classical hydrodynamic Kelvin-Helmholtz instability of a finite-width shear layer. Our results establish interesting connections between vortex arrays and shear-flow instabilities, suggesting a possible interpretation of the observed quantized vortex dynamics as a manifestation of the underlying unstable flow. Moreover, they open the way for exploring a wealth of out-of-equilibrium phenomena, from vortex-matter phase transitions to the spontaneous emergence and decay of two-dimensional quantum turbulence.