Matter created from a total vacuum forms swirling, quantized vortex patterns that look exactly like water flowing around a rock.
April 23, 2026
Original Paper
Vortex structures in electron-positron pair production by two-colored fields
arXiv · 2604.19002
The Takeaway
We usually think of a vacuum as an empty, static void. When intense electromagnetic fields pull electron-positron pairs out of that emptiness, the resulting particles don't just appear randomly. They organize themselves into a vortex street that follows the same fluid dynamics as a river. This reveals a deep, hidden connection between the subatomic world and the everyday physics of liquids. The fact that the birth of matter itself is swirly suggests that the vacuum has its own complex, fluid-like structure.
From the abstract
We investigate the spin resolved vortex properties of electron positron pairs created from vacuum in time delayed, two color electromagnetic fields. By treating the temporal delay G as a continuous tuning parameter, we reveal a dynamic transition from interference-dominated domain patterns at G=0 to the nucleation of quantized vortex lattices at G=0.5. These topological structures exhibit a staggered arrangement analogous to von Karman vortex streets in fluid dynamics. We demonstrate that the mo