Quantum Gases Show Turbulence Via Vortices, Waves, and Sound

Researchers are leveraging the uniquely controllable environment of ultracold gases to study turbulence, a phenomenon typically defined by chaotic behavior. In 1995, the observation of Bose-Einstein condensation in dilute atomic gases realized a long-predicted phase of matter with macroscopic quantum coherence. Unlike classical fluids, which rely on viscosity and the Reynolds number, quantum gases depend on quantized circulation, compressibility, and sound emission and interaction to understand turbulence because an ideal superfluid has no classical viscosity. These gases are routinely prepared close to their many-body ground state, allowing a direct connection between microscopic wave function dynamics and observed turbulence,…