- Physical Review Journals
All JournalsPhysics Magazine

Physical Review Letters

Reuse & Permissions

It is not necessary to obtain permission to reuse this article or its components as it is available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI are maintained. Please note that some figures may have been included with permission from other third parties. It is your responsibility to obtain the proper permission from the rights holder directly for these figures.

Export citation

Export citation

Choose format for download:

Download Citation
  • Open Access

Universal Critical Dynamics of Vortex Shedding in Quantum Fluids

Niccolò Geracitano1, Francesco Viola1,2, Paolo Luchini3, and Vincenzo Citro3,4,*

  • *Contact author: vcitro@unisa.it
PDF

Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 056004 – Published 28 July, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/pd91-32q3

Abstract

In classical fluid dynamics, the von Kármán vortex street behind a bluff body is the canonical example used to study vortex formation and dynamics. This is governed by a local Hopf bifurcation, which drives the continuous and asynchronous release of vortical structures in the wake. In superfluid systems, however, the quantization of vorticity fundamentally alters this picture. Several aspects of quantum vortex shedding remain unresolved, including the absence of a unified description spanning the pre- and post-threshold regimes. We show that the onset of vortex emission is governed by a global saddle node on invariant circle bifurcation. This mechanism produces a discrete transition characterized by a macroscopic bottleneck in phase space and a universal inverse-square-root divergence of the emission period near the critical velocity. These features are robust across obstacles of different shapes, revealing a universal mechanism underlying vortex shedding in quantum fluids.

View figure in article

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Article Text

Supplemental Material

References (48)

  1. L. Landau, Phys. Rev. 60, 356 (1941).
  2. T. Frisch, Y. Pomeau, and S. Rica, Phys. Rev. Lett. 69, 1644 (1992).
  3. K. Sasaki, N. Suzuki, and H. Saito, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 150404 (2010).
  4. R. J. Donnelly, Quantized Vortices in Helium II, Vol. 2 (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1991).
  5. T. P. Billam, M. T. Reeves, and A. S. Bradley, Phys. Rev. A 91, 023615 (2015).
  6. C. F. Barenghi, L. Skrbek, and K. R. Sreenivasan, Quantum Turbulence (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 2023).
  7. T. W. Neely, A. S. Bradley, E. C. Samson, S. J. Rooney, E. M. Wright, K. J. H. Law, R. Carretero-González, P. G. Kevrekidis, M. J. Davis, and B. P. Anderson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 235301 (2013).
  8. M. T. Reeves, T. P. Billam, B. P. Anderson, and A. S. Bradley, Phys. Rev. Lett. 114, 155302 (2015).
  9. M. T. Reeves, B. P. Anderson, and A. S. Bradley, Phys. Rev. A 86, 053621 (2012).
  10. N. Navon, A. L. Gaunt, R. P. Smith, and Z. Hadzibabic, Nature (London) 539, 72 (2016).
  11. A. Karailiev, M. Gazo, M. Gałka, C. Eigen, T. Satoor, and Z. Hadzibabic, Phys. Rev. Lett. 133, 243402 (2024).
  12. J. I. Polanco, N. P. Müller, and G. Krstulovic, Nat. Commun. 12, 7090 (2021).
  13. C. H. Williamson, in Fluid Vortices (Springer, New York, 1995), pp. 155–234.
  14. D. Fabre, V. Citro, D. Ferreira Sabino, P. Bonnefis, J. Sierra, F. Giannetti, and M. Pigou, Appl. Mech. Rev. 70, 060802 (2019).
  15. A. Finne, T. Araki, R. Blaauwgeers, V. Eltsov, N. Kopnin, M. Krusius, L. Skrbek, M. Tsubota, and G. Volovik, Nature (London) 424, 1022 (2003).
  16. G. E. Volovik, JETP Lett. 78, 533 (2003).
  17. H. Takeuchi, Phys. Rev. B 109, L020502 (2024).
  18. M. T. M. Christenhusz, A. Safavi-Naini, H. Rubinsztein-Dunlop, T. W. Neely, and M. T. Reeves, Phys. Rev. Lett. 135, 066001 (2025).
  19. W. J. Kwon, J. H. Kim, S. W. Seo, and Y. Shin, Phys. Rev. Lett. 117, 245301 (2016).
  20. R. Onofrio, C. Raman, J. M. Vogels, J. R. Abo-Shaeer, A. P. Chikkatur, and W. Ketterle, Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2228 (2000).
  21. T. W. Neely, E. C. Samson, A. S. Bradley, M. J. Davis, and B. P. Anderson, Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 160401 (2010).
  22. E. C. Samson, K. E. Wilson, Z. L. Newman, and B. P. Anderson, Phys. Rev. A 93, 023603 (2016).
  23. P. Engels and C. Atherton, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 160405 (2007).
  24. H. Kwak, J. H. Jung, and Y. Shin, Phys. Rev. A 107, 023310 (2023).
  25. G. W. Stagg, N. G. Parker, and C. F. Barenghi, J. Phys. B 47, 095304 (2014).
  26. N. G. Berloff and P. H. Roberts, J. Phys. A 33, 4025 (2000).
  27. S. Rica, Physica (Amsterdam) 148D, 221 (2001).
  28. J. Huynh, F. Hébert, M. Albert, and P.-E. Larré, Phys. Rev. A 109, 013317 (2024).
  29. C. Huepe and M. E. Brachet, Physica (Amsterdam) 140D, 126 (2000).
  30. V. Hakim, Phys. Rev. E 55, 2835 (1997).
  31. M. Brachet, C.R. Phys. 13, 954 (2012).
  32. C. Huepe and M.-E. Brachet, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 325, 195 (1997).
  33. C. Josserand, Y. Pomeau, and S. Rica, Physica (Amsterdam) 134D, 111 (1999).
  34. Y. Pomeau and S. Rica, C.R. l’Acad. Sci. Sér. II 316, 1523 (1993).
  35. C.-T. Pham and M. Brachet, Physica (Amsterdam) 163D, 127 (2002).
  36. L. Pitaevskii and S. Stringari, Bose-Einstein Condensation and Superfluidity (Oxford University Press, New York, 2016).
  37. See Supplemental Material at http://link.aps.org/supplemental/10.1103/pd91-32q3 for details on the dimensionless scattering formulation and the numerical methods used to solve the Gross-Pitaevskii equation; details on the specific obstacle configurations; and for details on the computation of a and c.
  38. N. Geracitano, F. Viola, P. Luchini, and V. Citro, A computational framework for steady-state continuation and Bogoliubov–de Gennes stability analysis of open quantum flows (2026).
  39. P. Luchini, CPL, Available at https://CPLcode.net (2020).
  40. F. Hecht, J. Numer. Math. 20, 251 (2012).
  41. E. M. Izhikevich, Dynamical Systems in Neuroscience: the Geometry of Excitability and Bursting (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2006).
  42. Y. A. Kuznetsov, Elements of Applied Bifurcation Theory, 2nd ed. (Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, 1998).
  43. S. Strogatz, Nonlinear Dynamics and Chaos: With Applications to Physics, Biology, Chemistry, and Engineering (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2018).
  44. S. Musser, D. Proment, M. Onorato, and William T. M. Irvine, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 154502 (2019).
  45. H. Kokubo, H. Takeuchi, and K. Kasamatsu, Phys. Rev. A 111, 043314 (2025).
  46. S. Yoneda and H. Takeuchi, J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. 94, 073601 (2025).
  47. T. F. C. Chan and H. B. Keller, SIAM J. Sci. Stat. Comput. 3, 173 (1982).
  48. M. Kunimi and Y. Kato, Phys. Rev. A 91, 053608 (2015).

Outline

Information

Phys. Rev. Lett. 137, 056004– Published 28 July, 2026
  • Received 24 November 2025
  • Revised 24 March 2026
  • Accepted 25 June 2026
Crossmark - Check for updates button
Creative Commons Logo

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.

Published by the American Physical Society

Sign In to Your Journals Account

Filter

Filter

Article Lookup

Enter a citation