Biomedical subjects

G E Volovik

Publications and source records attributed to G E Volovik.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2003

An intrinsic velocity-independent criterion for superfluid turbulence.

Hydrodynamic flow in classical and quantum fluids can be either laminar or turbulent. Vorticity in turbulent flow is often modelled with vortex filaments. While this represents an idealization in classical fluids, vortices are topologically stable quantized objects in superfluids. Superfluid turbulence is therefore thought to be important for the understanding of turbulence more generally. The fermionic 3He superfluids are attractive systems to study because their characteristics vary widely over the experimentally accessible temperature regime. Here we report nuclear magnetic resonance measurements and numerical simulations indicating the existence of sharp transition to turbulence in the B phase of superfluid 3He. Above 0.60T(c) (where T(c) is the transition temperature for superfluidity) the hydrodynamics are regular, while below this temperature we see turbulent behaviour. The transition is insensitive to the fluid velocity, in striking contrast to current textbook knowledge of turbulence. Rather, it is controlled by an intrinsic parameter of the superfluid: the mutual friction between the normal and superfluid components of the flow, which causes damping of the vortex motion.

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PubMed2003

Structure of the surface vortex sheet between two rotating 3He superfluids.

We study a two-phase sample of superfluid 3He where vorticity exists in one phase (3He-A) but cannot penetrate across the interfacial boundary to a second coherent phase (3He-B). We calculate the bending of the vorticity into a surface vortex sheet on the interface and solve the internal structure of this new type of vortex sheet. The compression of the vorticity from three to two dimensions enforces a structure which is made up of 1 / 2-quantum units, independently of the structure of the source vorticity in the bulk. These results are consistent with our NMR measurements.

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PubMed2002

Shear flow and Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in superfluids.

The first realization of instabilities in the shear flow between two superfluids is examined. The interface separating the A and B phases of superfluid 3He is magnetically stabilized. With uniform rotation we create a state with discontinuous tangential velocities at the interface, supported by the difference in quantized vorticity in the two phases. This state remains stable and nondissipative to high relative velocities, but finally undergoes an instability when an interfacial mode is excited and some vortices cross the phase boundary. The measured properties of the instability are consistent with the classic Kelvin-Helmholtz theory when modified for two-fluid hydrodynamics.

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PubMed2000

Monopoles and fractional vortices in chiral superconductors.

I discuss two exotic objects that must be experimentally identified in chiral superfluids and superconductors. These are (i) the vortex with a fractional quantum number (N = 1/2 in chiral superfluids, and N = 1/2 and N = 1/4 in chiral superconductors), which plays the part of the Alice string in relativistic theories and (ii) the hedgehog in the;l field, which is the counterpart of the Dirac magnetic monopole. These objects of different dimensions are topologically connected. They form the combined object that is called a nexus in relativistic theories. In chiral superconductors, the nexus has magnetic charge emanating radially from the hedgehog, whereas the half-quantum vortices play the part of the Dirac string. Each half-quantum vortex supplies the fractional magnetic flux to the hedgehog, representing 1/4 of the "conventional" Dirac string. I discuss the topological interaction of the superconductor's nexus with the 't Hooft-Polyakov magnetic monopole, which can exist in Grand Unified Theories. The monopole and the hedgehog with the same magnetic charge are topologically confined by a piece of the Abrikosov vortex. Such confinement makes the nexus a natural trap for the magnetic monopole. Other properties of half-quantum vortices and monopoles are discussed as well, including fermion zero modes.

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PubMed1999

Field theory in superfluid 3He: what are the lessons for particle physics, gravity, and high-temperature superconductivity?

There are several classes of homogeneous Fermi systems that are characterized by the topology of the energy spectrum of fermionic quasiparticles: (i) gapless systems with a Fermi surface, (ii) systems with a gap in their spectrum, (iii) gapless systems with topologically stable point nodes (Fermi points), and (iv) gapless systems with topologically unstable lines of nodes (Fermi lines). Superfluid 3He-A and electroweak vacuum belong to the universality class 3. The fermionic quasiparticles (particles) in this class are chiral: they are left-handed or right-handed. The collective bosonic modes of systems of class 3 are the effective gauge and gravitational fields. The great advantage of superfluid 3He-A is that we can perform experiments by using this condensed matter and thereby simulate many phenomena in high energy physics, including axial anomaly, baryoproduction, and magnetogenesis. 3He-A textures induce a nontrivial effective metrics of the space, where the free quasiparticles move along geodesics. With 3He-A one can simulate event horizons, Hawking radiation, rotating vacuum, etc. High-temperature superconductors are believed to belong to class 4. They have gapless fermionic quasiparticles with a "relativistic" spectrum close to gap nodes, which allows application of ideas developed for superfluid 3He-A.

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