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Updated: Sep 27, 2026

Scanning SQUID Study of Vortex Manipulation by Local Contact
Published on: February 1, 2017
Reconnection of colliding vortex rings
Philippe Chatelain1, Demosthenes Kivotides, Anthony Leonard
1Graduate Aeronautical Laboratories, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 91125, USA.
Abstract:
We investigate numerically the Navier-Stokes dynamics of reconnecting vortex rings at small Reynolds number for a variety of configurations. We find that reconnections are dissipative due to the smoothing of vorticity gradients at reconnection kinks and to the formation of secondary structures of stretched antiparallel vorticity which transfer kinetic energy to small scales where it is subsequently dissipated efficiently. In addition, the relaxation of the reconnection kinks excites Kelvin waves which due to strong damping are of low wave number and affect directly only large scale properties of the flow.
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