Counterflow-induced decoupling in superfluid turbulence

Abstract

In mechanically driven superfluid turbulence the mean velocities of the normal- and superfluid components are known to coincide: $\mathbf U_{\text{n}} =\mathbf U_{\text{s}}$. Numerous laboratory, numerical and analytical studies showed that under these conditions the mutual friction between the normal- and superfluid velocity components couples also their fluctuations: $\mathbf u'_{\text{n}}(\mathbf r,t) \approx \mathbf u'_{\text{s}}(\mathbf r,t)$ almost at all scales. In this paper we show that this is not the case in thermally driven superfluid turbulence; here the counterflow velocity $\mathbf U_{\text{ns}}\equiv \mathbf U_{\text{n}} -\mathbf U_{\text{s}}\ne 0$. We suggest a simple analytic model for the cross correlation function $\left\langle \mathbf u'_{\text{n}}(\mathbf r,t) \cdot \mathbf u'_{\text{s}}(\mathbf r',t)\right \rangle$ and its dependence on $U_{\text{ns}}$. We demonstrate that $\mathbf u'_{\text{n}}(\mathbf r,t)$ and $ \mathbf u'_{\text{s}}(\mathbf r,t)$ are decoupled almost in the entire range of separations $|\mathbf r-\mathbf r'|$ between the energy containing scale and intervortex distance.