Quantized superfluid vortices in the unitary Fermi gas within time dependent Superfluid Local Density Approximation

Quantized vortices are a hallmark of superfluids. Their generation, dynamics, evolution, and eventual decay have been studied experimentally for some six decades in liquid He and recently in Bose and Fermi cold atom systems. While life cycle of quantized vortices in Bose systems can be described by simple Gross-Pitaevskii equation, Fermi systems are more demanding where satisfactory description requires inclusion of many mechanisms for superfluid relaxation like various phonon processes or Cooper pair breaking. In this talk I will show that time-dependent superfluid density functional theory (TDDFT) in natural manner incorporates all these necessary ingredients. I will present numerical results for formation and dynamics of a superfluid vortex in the unitary Fermi gas and I will compare them with recent MIT experimental observations. New imagining techniques demonstrated by the MIT group should be able to directly visualize this crossing and reconnection of vortex lines, conjectured by Feynman in 1955 to be at the origin of quantum turbulence in superfluids at zero temperature.