Quantization of Hydrodynamics: Rotating Superfluid and Gravitational Anomaly

Abstract

We present a consistent scheme of quantization of chiral flows (flows with extensive vorticity) in ideal hydrodynamics in two dimensions. Chiral flows occur in rotating superfluid, rotating turbulence and also in electronic systems in the magnetic field in the regime of a fractional Hall effect. The quantization is based on a geometric relation of chiral flows to two-dimensional quantum gravity and is implemented by the gravitational anomaly. The effect of the gravitational anomaly violates the major property of classical hydrodynamics, the Helmholtz law: vortices are no longer frozen into the flow. Effects of quantization could be cast in the form of quantum stress. We show that the quantum stress generates Virasoro algebra, the centrally extended algebra of holomorphic diffeomorphisms.