Nonequilibrium statistical mechanics of two-dimensional vortices

Abstract

It has been observed empirically that two-dimensional vortices tend to cluster, forming a giant vortex. To account for this observation, Onsager introduced the concept of negative absolute temperature in equilibrium statistical mechanics. In this Letter, we show that in the thermodynamic limit a system of interacting vortices does not relax to the thermodynamic equilibrium but becomes trapped in a nonequilibrium stationary state. We show that the vortex distribution in this nonequilibrium stationary state has a characteristic core-halo structure, which can be predicted a priori. All the theoretical results are compared with explicit molecular dynamics simulations.