The stability of the Couette flow of helium II

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Abstract
The stability of Couette flow in HeII is considered by an analysis of the HVBK equations. These equations are based on the Landau two-fluid model of HeII and include mutual friction between the normal and superfluid components, and the vortex tension due to the presence of superfluid vortices. We find that the vortex tension strongly affects the nature of the Taylor instability at temperatures below ≈ 2.05 K. The effect of the vortex tension is to make non-axisymmetric modes the most unstable, and to make the critical axial wavelength very long. We compare our results with experiments.