Intra-scales energy transfer during the evolution of turbulence in a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

In turbulence phenomena, including the quantum turbulence in superfluids, an energy flux flows from large to small length scales, composing a cascade of energy. A universal characteristic of turbulent flows is the existence of a range of scales where the energy flux is scale-invariant: this interval of scales is often referred to as inertial region. This property is fundamental as, for instance, in turbulence of classical fluids it characterizes the behavior of statistical features such as spectra and structure functions. Here we show that also in decaying quantum turbulence generated in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), intervals of momentum space where the energy flux is constant can be identified. Indeed, we present a procedure to measure the energy flux using both the energy spectrum and the continuity equation. A range of scales where the flux is constant is then determined employing two distinct protocols and in the same range, the momentum distribution measured is consistent with previous work. The successful identification of a region with constant flux in turbulent BECs is a manifestation of the universal character of turbulence in these quantum systems. These measurements pave the way for studies of energy conservation and dissipation in trapped atomic superfluids, and also analogies with the related processes that take place in ordinary fluids.