Quantum and quasiclassical types of superfluid turbulence

Abstract

By injecting negative ions in superfluid 4He in the zero-temperature limit (T < 0.5 K), we generated tangles of quantized vortex line with negligible large-scale flow. For this quantum regime of superfluid turbulence, the vortex line length L was found to decay at late time t as L proportional to t^{-1}; the prefactor being independent of the initial value of L. The corresponding effective kinematic viscosity is 0.1 kappa, where kappa is the circulation quantum. At T > 0.7 K, a jet of ions generates quasi-classical tangles identical to those produced by mechanical means.