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Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 215002 (2004) [4 pages]

Breaking of Rotational Symmetry in Cylindrically Bounded 2D Electron Plasmas and 2D Fluids

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Eli Sarid1,2, Catalin Teodorescu3, Philip S. Marcus4, and Joel Fajans1
1Physics Department, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA
2Physics Department, NRCN, P.O. Box 9001, Beer-Sheva 84190, Israel
3West Virginia University, P.O. 6315, Morgantown, West Virginia 26506-6315, USA
4Mechanical Engineering, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720-7300, USA

Received 24 April 2003; published 17 November 2004

Off-axis final states of cylindrically bounded 2D fluids can develop from initially unstable, but cylindrically symmetric, 2D vorticity distributions. Experiments with electrons in a Malmberg-Penning trap, as well as 2D fluid simulations, demonstrated that such states result when the initial vorticity distribution is close to the boundary, while less extended distributions lead to on-axis states. A simple thermodynamic model, maximizing the entropy of a state consisting of a diffuse background surrounding a strong coherent vortex, is shown to quantitatively predict this bifurcation, while conserving circulation, angular momentum, and energy.


©2004 The American Physical Society

URL: http://link.aps.org/abstract/PRL/v93/e215002
DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.93.215002
PACS: 52.27.Jt, 47.20.–k, 47.32.Cc

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