Generation and detection of vortex rings in superfluid ⁴He at very low temperature

Motions of vortices are fundamental characteristics of quantum turbulence. These motions are expected to be governed only by quantized circulations in superfluids at the zero temperature limit. In the present paper, we report the motions of vortex rings emitted from a quantum turbulence in superfluid ⁴He, by detecting vortex rings using a vortex-free vibrating wire as a detector. The time of flights of vortex rings are distributed, because vortex rings are emitted in any direction from a turbulent region and the detector can respond only to a reachable vortex ring. By measuring time-of-flights many times, we find an exponential distribution of time-of-flights with a non-detection period, which corresponds to the fastest time of flights of vortex rings. For a larger generation power of vortex rings, a distribution of time-of-flights still shows a single exponential distribution, but a non-detection period becomes shorter. This result implies that sizes of emitted vortex rings are distributed dependently on the generation power of turbulence. The observed exponential distributions are confirmed by numerical simulations of the dynamics of vortex rings.