• Accepted Paper

Observation of Vinen turbulence during far-from-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensation

Sebastian J. Morris, Martin Gazo, Simon M. Fischer, Haoyu Zhang, Christopher J. Ho, Nigel R. Cooper, Christoph Eigen, and Zoran Hadzibabic

Phys. Rev. Lett. - Accepted 10 September, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/lywd-gjg9

Abstract

Relaxation of far-from-equilibrium quantum fluids, intimately related to the emergence of long-range order, is theoretically associated with the decay of a turbulent isotropic tangle of vortex lines. We observe and study such decaying quantum turbulence in a homogeneous 3D atomic Bose gas. Using matter-wave techniques to magnify the gas density distribution, and then imaging a thin slice of the magnified cloud, we observe imprints of randomly oriented vortex lines and measure the vortex line-length density ℒ. The observed decay of ℒ agrees with the prediction for Vinen ultraquantum turbulence. Although our weakly interacting gases are highly compressible, their large-scale dynamics are consistent with the behavior of an incompressible hydrodynamic fluid, with the decay of ℒ not depending on the strength of the interatomic interactions and being similar to that in the strongly interacting superfluid helium.

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