Turbulence without inertia in thermally excited superfluids

Numerical calculations of 4He-II hydrodynamics show that a dense tangle of superfluid vortices induces in an initially stationary normal fluid a highly dissipative, complex, vortical flow pattern (“turbulence”) with k−2.2 energy spectrum scaling and fluctuations Reynolds number of order unity. In this normal fluid flow the effects of mutual friction excitation from the superfluid vortices and those of viscous stresses are of the same order.