Swimming against a superfluid flow: Self-propulsion via vortex-antivortex shedding in a quantum fluid of light
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arXiv
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| Main Authors: | , , , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866914190997848064 |
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| author | Baker-Rasooli, Myrann Aladjidi, Tangui Ferreira, Tiago D. Bramati, Alberto Albert, Mathias Larré, Pierre-Élie Glorieux, Quentin |
| author_facet | Baker-Rasooli, Myrann Aladjidi, Tangui Ferreira, Tiago D. Bramati, Alberto Albert, Mathias Larré, Pierre-Élie Glorieux, Quentin |
| contents | A superfluid flows without friction below a critical velocity, exhibiting zero drag force on impurities. Above this threshold, superfluidity breaks down, and the internal energy is redistributed into incoherent excitations such as vortices. We demonstrate that a finite-mass, mobile impurity immersed in a flowing two-dimensional paraxial superfluid of light can \textit{swim} against the superfluid current when this critical velocity is exceeded. This self-propulsion is achieved by the periodic emission of quantized vortex-antivortex pairs downstream, which impart an upstream recoil momentum that results in a net propulsive force. Analogous to biological systems that minimize effort by exploiting wake turbulence, the impurity harnesses this vortex backreaction as a passive mechanism of locomotion. Reducing the impurity dynamics to the motion of its center of mass and using a point-vortex model, we quantitatively describe how this mechanism depends on the impurity geometry and the surrounding flow velocity. Our findings establish a fundamental link between internal-energy dissipation in quantum fluids and concepts of self-propulsion in active-matter systems, and opens new possibilities for exploiting vortices for controlled quantum transport at the microscale. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_09028 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Swimming against a superfluid flow: Self-propulsion via vortex-antivortex shedding in a quantum fluid of light Baker-Rasooli, Myrann Aladjidi, Tangui Ferreira, Tiago D. Bramati, Alberto Albert, Mathias Larré, Pierre-Élie Glorieux, Quentin Quantum Gases Soft Condensed Matter Quantum Physics A superfluid flows without friction below a critical velocity, exhibiting zero drag force on impurities. Above this threshold, superfluidity breaks down, and the internal energy is redistributed into incoherent excitations such as vortices. We demonstrate that a finite-mass, mobile impurity immersed in a flowing two-dimensional paraxial superfluid of light can \textit{swim} against the superfluid current when this critical velocity is exceeded. This self-propulsion is achieved by the periodic emission of quantized vortex-antivortex pairs downstream, which impart an upstream recoil momentum that results in a net propulsive force. Analogous to biological systems that minimize effort by exploiting wake turbulence, the impurity harnesses this vortex backreaction as a passive mechanism of locomotion. Reducing the impurity dynamics to the motion of its center of mass and using a point-vortex model, we quantitatively describe how this mechanism depends on the impurity geometry and the surrounding flow velocity. Our findings establish a fundamental link between internal-energy dissipation in quantum fluids and concepts of self-propulsion in active-matter systems, and opens new possibilities for exploiting vortices for controlled quantum transport at the microscale. |
| title | Swimming against a superfluid flow: Self-propulsion via vortex-antivortex shedding in a quantum fluid of light |
| topic | Quantum Gases Soft Condensed Matter Quantum Physics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.09028 |