Self-trapping of magnon Bose-Einstein condensates in the ground state and on excited levels: from harmonic to box confinement.

Long-lived coherent spin precession of (3)He-B at low temperatures around 0.2T(c) is a manifestation of Bose-Einstein condensation of spin-wave excitations or magnons in a magnetic trap which is formed by the order-parameter texture and can be manipulated experimentally. When the number of magnons increases, the orbital texture reorients under the influence of the spin-orbit interaction and the profile of the trap gradually changes from harmonic to a square well, with walls almost impenetrable to magnons. This is the first experimental example of Bose condensation in a box. By selective rf pumping the trap can be populated with a ground-state condensate or one at any of the excited energy levels. In the latter case the ground state is simultaneously populated by relaxation from the exited level, forming a system of two coexisting condensates.

Superfluid vortex front at T→0: decoupling from the reference frame.

Steady-state turbulent motion is created in superfluid (3)He-B at low temperatures in the form of a turbulent vortex front, which moves axially along a rotating cylindrical container of (3)He-B and replaces vortex-free flow with vortex lines at constant density. We present the first measurements on the thermal signal from dissipation as a function of time, recorded at 0.2T(c) during the front motion, which is monitored using NMR techniques. Both the measurements and the numerical calculations of the vortex dynamics show that at low temperatures the density of the propagating vortices falls well below the equilibrium value, i.e., the superfluid rotates at a smaller angular velocity than the container. This is the first evidence for the decoupling of the superfluid from the container reference frame in the zero-temperature limit.

Stability and dissipation of laminar vortex flow in superfluid 3He-B.

A central question in the dynamics of vortex lines in superfluids is dissipation on approaching the zero temperature limit T→0. From both NMR measurements and vortex filament calculations, we find that vortex flow remains laminar up to large Reynolds numbers Re{α}∼10(3) in a cylinder filled with 3He-B. This is different from viscous fluids and superfluid 4He, where the corresponding responses are turbulent. In 3He-B, laminar vortex flow is possible in the bulk volume even in the presence of sizable perturbations from axial symmetry to below 0.2Tc. The laminar flow displays no excess dissipation beyond mutual friction, which vanishes in the T→0 limit, in contrast with turbulent vortex motion where dissipation has been earlier measured to approach a large T-independent value at T≲0.2Tc.

Energy and angular momentum balance in wall-bounded quantum turbulence at very low temperatures.

A superfluid in the absence of a viscous normal component should be the best realization of an ideal inviscid Euler fluid. As expressed by d'Alembert's famous paradox, an ideal fluid does not drag on bodies past which it flows, or in other words it does not exchange momentum with them. In addition, the flow of an ideal fluid does not dissipate kinetic energy. Here we study experimentally whether these properties apply to the flow of superfluid (3)He-B in a rotating cylinder at low temperatures. It is found that ideal behaviour is broken by quantum turbulence, which leads to substantial energy dissipation, as was also observed earlier. Remarkably, the angular momentum exchange between the superfluid and its container approaches nearly ideal behaviour, as the drag almost disappears in the zero-temperature limit. Here the mismatch between energy and angular momentum transfer results in a new physical situation, with severe implications on the flow dynamics.