Observations of Vortex Emissions from Superfluid 4He Turbulence at High Temperatures

Abstract

An immersed object with high velocity oscillations causes quantum turbu- lence in superfluid 4 He, even at very low temperatures. The continuously generated turbulence may emit vortex rings from a turbulent region. In the present work, we report vortex emissions from quantum turbulence in superfluid 4 He at high temper- atures, by using three vibrating wires as a turbulence generator and vortex detec- tors. Two detector wires were mounted beside a generator wire: one in parallel and the other in perpendicular to the oscillation direction of the generator. The detection times of vortex rings represent an exponential distribution with a delay time t0 and a mean detection period t1. The delay time includes the generation time of a fully developed turbulence and the time-of-flight of a vortex ring. At high temperatures, vortices are dissipated by relative motion between a normal fluid component and the vortices, resulting that only large vortex rings are reachable to the detectors. Using this method, we detected vortex rings with a diameter of 100 µm, comparable to a peak-to-peak vibration amplitude of 104 µm of the generator. The large vortices ob- served here are emitted anisotropically from the generator. The emissions parallel to the vibrating direction are much less than those perpendicular to the direction.