2025/12/18 by Gavassino, Lorenzo, Soloviev, Alexander
Physics and Astronomy · #Cold Atom Physics and Bose-Einstein Condensates #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Pulsars and Gravitational Waves Research #Quantum Gases (cond-mat.quant-gas) #Quantum, superfluid, helium dynamics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2512.16797
openalex publication_date 2025/12/18 · openalex created_date 2025/12/21 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Landau's two-fluid model of superfluidity ceases to apply in regions where the condensate amplitude exhibits rapid spatial variation, such as vortex cores or in the vicinity of container walls. A recently proposed relativistic Gross-Pitaevskii-type framework treats the condensate as an independent scalar degree of freedom, enabling a controlled analysis of such regimes. We use it to construct stationary superflows close to the superfluid-normal phase boundary, and examine their stability. We obtain an exact expression for Landau's critical velocity and show that the standard Newtonian profiles (such as the near-vortex condensate depletion or the boundary-layer decay) persist unmodified in the relativistic setting. We further analyse a genuinely relativistic configuration in which an accelerated superfluid develops a phase boundary induced by Tolman temperature gradients.