Mass-driven vortex collisions in flat superfluids

Abstract

Quantum vortices are often endowed with an effective inertial mass, due, for example, to massive particles in their cores. Such "massive vortices" display new phenomena beyond the standard picture of superfluid vortex dynamics, where the mass is neglected. In this work, we demonstrate that massive vortices are allowed to collide, as opposed to their massless counterparts. We propose a scheme to generate controllable, repeatable, deterministic collisional events in pairs of quantum vortices. We demonstrate two mass-driven fundamental processes: (i) the annihilation of two counter-rotating vortices and (ii) the merging of two co-rotating vortices, thus pointing out new mechanisms supporting incompressible-to-compressible kinetic energy conversion, as well as doubly-quantized vortices stabilization in flat superfluids.