Vortex Filament Dynamics in the Unitary Fermi Gas

Quantum turbulence, characterized by quantized vortices which tangle and interact in a "turbulent" manner, plays a key role in neutron stars, and may hold the key to puzzling phenomena such as pulsar glitches. To understand if neutron superfluids explain glitches, however, one needs to simulate dynamics in macroscopic volumes of nuclear matter, which is prohibitively expensive using microscopic quantum dynamics. The vortex filament model – well-studied in Helium – tracks individual vortices, expressing the bulk superfluid flow with the Biot-Savart law, and can be scaled to much larger volumes relevant for glitches. However, applications of the vortex filament model to the unitary Fermi gas and dilute neutron matter are not as well studied. In this work, we examine vortex dynamics and interactions in the unitary Fermi gas, comparing the vortex filament approach to full simulation of microscopic quantum dynamics using time-dependent density functional theories (TDDFT). Because the unitary Fermi gas is a good approximation to the neutron superfluid in neutron star crusts, this project makes valuable progress towards understanding neutron stars.