Velocity Statistics Distinguish Quantum Turbulence from Classical Turbulence

Understand

By analyzing trajectories of solid hydrogen tracers, we find that the distributions of velocity in decaying quantum turbulence in superfluid $^4$He are strongly non-Gaussian with $1/v^3$ power-law tails.

• These features differ from the near-Gaussian statistics of homogenous and isotropic turbulence of classical fluids.
• We examine the dynamics of many events of reconnection between quantized vortices and show by simple scaling arguments that they produce the observed power-law tails.