A profound change occurs in the stability of quantized vortices in externally applied flow of superfluid 3He-B at temperatures ~ 0.6 Tc, owing to the rapidly decreasing damping in vortex motion with decreasing temperature. At low damping an evolving vortex may become unstable and generate a new independent vortex loop. This single-vortex instability is the generic precursor to turbulence. We investigate the instability with non-invasive NMR measurements on a rotating cylindrical sample in the intermediate temperature regime (0.3 - 0.6) Tc. From comparisons with numerical calculations we interpret that the instability occurs at the container wall, when the vortex end moves along the wall in applied flow.
@article{arxiv.0708.3003,
title = {The dynamics of vortex generation in superfluid 3He-B},
author = {R. de Graaf and R. Hanninen and T. V. Chagovets and V. B. Eltsov and M. Krusius and R. E. Solntsev},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0708.3003},
year = {2011}
}
Comments
revised & extended version. Journal of Low Temperature Physics, accepted (2008)