Reconnection of superfluid vortex bundles

Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Nov 21;101(21):215302. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.215302. Epub 2008 Nov 20.

Abstract

Using the vortex filament model and the Gross-Pitaevskii nonlinear Schroedinger equation, we show that bundles of quantized vortex lines in He II are structurally robust and can reconnect with each other maintaining their identity. We discuss vortex stretching in superfluid turbulence and show that, during the bundle reconnection process, kelvin waves of large amplitude are generated, in agreement with the finding that helicity is produced by nearly singular vortex interactions in classical Euler flows.