Hydrodynamic limit of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation

Abstract

We study dynamics of vortices in solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation $i \partial_t u = \Delta u + \varepsilon^{-2} u (1 - |u|^2)$ on $\mathbb{R}^2$ with nonzero degree at infinity. We prove that vortices move according to the classical Kirchhoff-Onsager ODE for a small but finite coupling parameter $\varepsilon$. By carefully tracking errors we allow for asymptotically large numbers of vortices, and this lets us connect the Gross-Pitaevskii equation on the plane to two dimensional incompressible Euler equations through the work of Schochet [21].