Abstract
Quantum turbulence accompanying thermal counterflow in superfluid He was recently visualized by the Maryland group, using micrometer-sized tracer particles of solid hydrogen [Paoletti, Fiorito, Sreenivasan, and Lathrop, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 77, 111007 (2008)]. In order to understand the observations, we formulate the coupled dynamics of fine particles and quantized vortices, in the presence of a relative motion of the normal and superfluid components. Numerical simulations based on this formulation are shown to agree reasonably well with experimental observations of the velocity distributions of the tracer particles in thermal counterflow.
- Received 5 February 2013
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.87.174508
©2013 American Physical Society