Mass currents and singularities in3He-A

Abstract

It is shown that the particular form of the mass current in ³He-A found by Cross (1975) is equivalent to a phenomenological assumption that the current depends only on the traceless part of the tensor Omega _ij introduced by Mermin and Ho (1976) to describe spatial variations of the order parameter. An equation of motion for Omega _ij is derived in terms of the vector C introduced previously by the author (1975) to describe temporal variations of the order parameter. The appropriate generalizations of curl nu _s=0 and the quantization of circulation for ³He-A are derived in terms of Omega _ij, and the nature of possible singularities is discussed.