Title:
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Analysis of quantised vortex tangle
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This thesis is an investigation of the tangled vortex lines that arise in the interference
of complex waves in three dimensions; they are nodal lines of the intensity where both
the real and imaginary components of the wavefield cancel out, and are singularities of
the complex phase about which it sweeps out a quantised total change. We investigate
the behaviour of this tangle as expressed in random degenerate eigenfunctions of the
3-torus, 3-sphere and quantum harmonic oscillator as models for wave chaos, in which
many randomly weighted interfering waves produce a statistically characteristic vortex
ensemble.
The geometrical and topological nature of these vortex tangles is examined via large
scale numerical simulations of random wave fields; local geometry is recovered with
sufficient precision to confirm the connection to analytical random wave models, but we
also recover the (high order) torsion that appears analytically inaccessible, and quantify
the different length scales along which vortex lines decorrelate. From our simulations we
recover statistics also on much larger scales, confirming a fractality of individual vortices
consistent with random walks but also comparing and contrasting the scaling of the full
vortex ensemble with other models of filamentary tangle.
The nature of the tangling itself is also investigated, geometrically where possible but
in particular topologically by testing directly whether vortex curves are knotted or linked
with one another. We confirm that knots and links exist, but find their statistics greatly
influenced by the nature of the random wave ensemble; vortices in the 3-torus are knotted
far less than might be expected from their scales of geometrical de correlation, but in the
3-sphere and harmonic oscillator exhibit more common and more complex topology. We
discuss how this result relates to the construction of each system, and finish with brief
discussion of some selected topological observations.
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