Critical Velocity for a Self-Sustaining Vortex Tangle in Superfluid Helium
- 31 January 1983
- journal article
- research article
- Published by American Physical Society (APS) in Physical Review Letters
- Vol. 50 (5), 364-367
- https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.50.364
Abstract
A recent treatment of superfluid turbulence is extended to the study of turbulence in a channel. It is found that as the flow velocity is reduced, a critical velocity is reached such that the rate at which new vortex singularities are created by line-line reconnections becomes insufficient to balance the loss of vortices at the channel walls, and the vortex tangle ceases to be topologically self-sustaining. Comparison with experiment indicates that this approach provides a reasonable explanation of observed critical velocities.Keywords
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