Effective thermal conductivity of helium II: from Landau to Gorter–Mellink regimes

Abstract

The size-dependent and flux-dependent effective thermal conductivity of narrow channels filled with He II is analyzed. The classical Landau evaluation of the effective thermal conductivity of quiescent He II is extended to describe the transition to fully turbulent regime, where the heat flux is proportional to the cubic root of the temperature gradient (Gorter–Mellink regime). To do so, we use an expression for the quantum vortex line density L in terms of the heat flux considering the influence of the walls. From it, and taking into account the friction force of normal component against the vortices, we compute the effective thermal conductivity as a function of the heat flux, and we discuss in detail the corresponding size dependence.