Turbulence is a ubiquitous phenomena in our universe, from microscopic to galactic scales. However, modelling turbulent fluid flow is an open theoretical problem -- Richard Feynman once declared it "the most important unsolved problem in classical physics". The difficulty in understanding turbulence is tied to its fundamental nature as a process simultaneously involving many scales, which complicates both experiment and theory.

This project aims to investigate turbulence in a highly-controlled environment -- a superfluid formed in an ultra-cold atomic gas -- which can be accurately modelled by a range of numerical and analytical techniques. Specifically, the aims of this project are two fold:

1. The first aim is to build a numerical and analytical toolbox for modelling turbulence in two-dimensional superfluids formed from a dilute atomic gas cooled close to absolute zero. These models can be derived from the microscopic theory of ultra-cold atoms, which allows us to make quantitative predictions for realistic experimental settings.
2. The second aim is to apply these theoretical tools to study the transfer of energy across scales in a turbulent atomic superfluid, subject to external driving and damping. Energy transport across scales is tied to the fundamental nature of turbulence, and this project will aim to deepen our understanding of energy transport in turbulent superfluids.

The work will involve performing detailed numerical simulations of atomic superfluids subject to external forces, and can be extended to include comparison to simple analytic models.

• Many-body quantum mechanics (specifically, Bose-Einstein condensation) would be useful
• This project will require numerical modelling