Interacting systems driven far from equilibrium tend to evolve to steady states exhibiting largescale structure and order. In two-dimensional turbulent flow the seemingly random swirling motion of a fluid can evolve towards persistent large-scale vortices. Lars Onsager proposed a model based on statistical mechanics of quantized vortices to explain such behavior. Here we report the first experimental confirmation of Onsager's model of turbulence. We drag a grid barrier through an oblate superfluid Bose-Einstein condensate to generate non-equilibrium distributions of vortices. We observe an inverse energy cascade driven by the evaporative heating of vortices, leading to steady-state configurations characterized by negative temperatures. Our results open a pathway for quantitative studies of emergent structures in interacting quantum systems driven far from equilibrium. arXiv:1801.06952v2 [cond-mat.quant-gas]

We study computationally dynamics of quantised vortices in two-dimensional superfluid Bose-Einstein condensates confined in highly oblate power-law traps. We have found that the formation of large scale Onsager vortex clusters prevalent in steep-walled traps is suppressed in condensates confined by harmonic potentials. However, the shape of the trapping potential does not appear to adversely affect the evaporative heating efficiency of the vortex gas. Instead, the suppression of Onsager vortex formation in harmonic traps can be understood in terms of the energy of the vortex configurations. Furthermore, we find that the vortex-antivortex pair annihilation that underpins the vortex evaporative heating mechanism requires the interaction of at least three vortices. We conclude that experimental observation of Onsager vortices should be the most apparent in flat or inverted-bottom traps.

We introduce a new method of statistical analysis to characterize the dynamics of turbulent fluids in two dimensions. We establish that, in equilibrium, the vortex distributions can be uniquely connected to the temperature of the vortex gas, and we apply this vortex thermometry to characterize simulations of decaying superfluid turbulence. We confirm the hypothesis of vortex evaporative heating leading to Onsager vortices proposed in Phys. Rev. Lett. 113, 165302 (2014)PRLTAO0031-900710.1103/PhysRevLett.113.165302, and we find previously unidentified vortex power-law distributions that emerge from the dynamics.

We derive a general and exact equation of motion for a quantised vortex in an inhomogeneous two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate. This equation expresses the velocity of a vortex as a sum of local ambient density and phase gradients in the vicinity of the vortex. We perform Gross-Pitaevskii simulations of single vortex dynamics in both harmonic and hard-walled disk-shaped traps, and find excellent agreement in both cases with our analytical prediction. The simulations reveal that, in a harmonic trap, the main contribution to the vortex velocity is an induced ambient phase gradient, a finding that contradicts the commonly quoted result that the local density gradient is the only relevant effect in this scenario. We use our analytical vortex velocity formula to derive a point-vortex model that accounts for both density and phase contributions to the vortex velocity, suitable for use in inhomogeneous condensates. Although good agreement is obtained between Gross-Pitaevskii and point-vortex simulations for specific few-vortex configurations, the effects of nonuniform condensate density are in general highly nontrivial, and are thus difficult to efficiently and accurately model using a simplified point-vortex description.

We have studied statistical mechanics of a gas of vortices in two dimensions. We introduce a new observable-a condensate fraction of Onsager vortices-to quantify the emergence of the vortex condensate. The condensation of Onsager vortices is most transparently observed in a single vortex species system and occurs due to a competition between solid body rotation (see vortex lattice) and potential flow (see multiple quantum vortex state). We propose an experiment to observe the condensation transition of the vortices in such a single vortex species system.