Synthetic dissipation and cascade fluxes in a turbulent quantum gas.

Navon, Nir; Eigen, Christoph; Zhang, Jinyi; Lopes, Raphael; Gaunt, Alexander L; Fujimoto, Kazuya; Tsubota, Makoto; Smith, Robert P et al. · Science · 2019

basic_science · Level V

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Abstract

Scale-invariant fluxes are the defining property of turbulent cascades, but their direct measurement is a challenging experimental problem. Here we perform such a measurement for a direct energy cascade in a turbulent quantum gas. Using a time-periodic force, we inject energy at a large length scale and generate a cascade in a uniformly trapped three-dimensional Bose gas. The adjustable trap depth provides a high-momentum cutoff <i>k</i> <sub>D</sub>, which realizes a synthetic dissipation scale. This gives us direct access to the particle flux across a momentum shell of radius <i>k</i> <sub>D</sub>, and the tunability of <i>k</i> <sub>D</sub> allows for a clear demonstration of the zeroth law of turbulence. Moreover, our time-resolved measurements give unique access to the pre-steady-state dynamics, when the cascade front propagates in momentum space.