Quantum Turbulence in a Planar Bose–Einstein Condensate

Lars Onsager noted that turbulent fluids constrained to flow in two dimensions tend to develop large-scale features. Quantum fluids, such as atomic Bose–Einstein condensates, also feature turbulent flows, however their vortices behave as discrete point-like particles. This thesis presents the results of experiments on the distribution of quantised vortices in highly oblate, uniform Bose-Einstein condensates. Initially randomly distributed vortices were observed to rearrange themselves to become more ordered, resembling Onsager’s description of large-scale flow features. These results add to our current understanding of the physical processes involved in turbulent flows of superfluids.