Vortices are pervasive in nature, representing the breakdown of laminar fluid flow and hence playing a key role in turbulence. The fluid rotation associated with a vortex can be parameterized by the circulation $Γ=\oint {\rm d}{\bf r}\cdot{\bf v}({\bf r})$ about the vortex, where ${\bf v}({\bf r})$ is the fluid velocity field. While classical vortices can take any value of circulation, superfluids are irrotational, and any rotation or angular momentum is constrained to occur through vortices with quantized circulation. Quantized vortices also play a key role in the dissipation of transport in superfluids. In BECs quantized vortices have been observed in several forms, including single vortices, vortex lattices, and vortex pairs and rings. The recent observation of quantized vortices in a fermionic gas was taken as a clear signature of the underlying condensation and superfluidity of fermion pairs. In addition to BECs, quantized vortices also occur in superfluid Helium, nonlinear optics, and type-II superconductors.
We investigate the dynamics of doubly charged vortices generated in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates by using the topological phase imprinting technique. We find splitting times of such vortices and show that thermal atoms are responsible for their decay.
It is shown that vortices in linearly polarized polariton condensates in planar semiconductor microcavities carry two winding numbers (k,m). These numbers can be either integer or half-integer simultaneously. Four half-integer vortices (1/2,1/2), (-1/2,-1/2), (1/2,-1/2), and (-1/2,1/2) are anisotropic, possess the smallest energy, and define the Kosterlitz-Thouless transition temperature. The condensate concentration remains finite within the core of half-vortex and the polarization becomes fully circular in the core center.
We present a theoretical study of vortices within a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensate in a rotating optical lattice. We find that proximity to the Mott insulating state dramatically effects the vortex structures. To illustrate we give examples in which the vortices: (i) all sit at a fixed distance from the center of the trap, forming a ring, or (ii) coalesce at the center of the trap, forming a giant vortex. We model time-of-flight expansion to demonstrate the experimental observability of our predictions.
In a condensate made of two different atomic molecular species, Onsager's quantization condition implies that around a vortex the velocity field cannot be the same for the two species. We explore some simple consequences of this observation. Thus if the two condensates are in slow relative translation one over the other, the composite vortices are carried at a velocity that is a fraction of the single species velocity. This property is valid for attractive interaction and below a critical velocity which corresponds to a saddle-node bifurcation.
We propose a different type of Landau instability in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates by a helically moving environment. In the presence of quantized vortices, the instability can cause spontaneous radiation and amplification of Kelvin waves. This study gives a microscopic understanding of the Donnelly-Glaberson instability which was known as a hydrodynamic instability in superfluid helium. The Donnelly-Glaberson instability can be a powerful tool for observing the dispersion relation of Kelvin waves, vortex reconnections, and quantum turbulence in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates.
The dynamics of a ring of vortices in two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates (with and without an additional vortex at the center) is studied for (1) a uniform condensate in a rigid cylinder and (2) a nonuniform trapped condensate in the Thomas-Fermi limit. The sequence of ground states (within these single-ring configurations) is determined as a function of the external rotation frequency by comparing the free energy of the various states. For each ground state, the Tkachenko-like excitations and the associated dynamical stability are analyzed.
A relaxation method is employed to study a rotating dense Bose-Einstein condensate beyond Thomas-Fermi approximation. We use a slave-boson model to describe the strongly interacting condensate and derive a generalized non-linear Schrödinger equation with kinetic term for the rotating condensate. In comparison with previous calculations, based on Thomas-Fermi approximation, significant improvements are found in regions, where the condensate in a trap potential is not smooth. The critical angular velocity of the vortex formation is higher than in the Thomas-Fermi prediction.
In this brief review we summarize a number of recent developments in the study of vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates, a topic of considerable theoretical and experimental interest in the past few years. We examine the generation of vortices by means of phase imprinting, as well as via dynamical instabilities. Their stability is subsequently examined in the presence of purely magnetic trapping, and in the combined presence of magnetic and optical trapping. We then study pairs of vortices and their interactions, illustrating a reduced description in terms of ordinary differential equations fo…
We introduce a nonlinear Schroedinger equation to describe the dynamics of a superfluid Bose gas in the crossover from the weak-coupling regime, where $a n^{1/3}\ll 1$ with $a$ the inter-atomic s-wave scattering length and $n$ the bosonic density, to the unitarity limit, where $a\to +\infty$. We call this equation the {unitarity Schroedinger equation} (USE). The zero-temperature bulk equation of state of this USE is parametrized by the Lee-Yang-Huang low-density expansion and Jastrow calculations at unitarity. With the help of the USE we study the profiles of quantized vortices and vortex-core…
We develop a semi-classical field method for the study of the weakly interacting Bose gas at finite temperature, which, contrarily to the usual classical field model, does not suffer from an ultraviolet cut-off dependence. We apply the method to the study of thermal vortices in spatially homogeneous, two-dimensional systems. We present numerical results for the vortex density and the vortex pair distribution function. Insight in the physics of the system is obtained by comparing the numerical results with the predictions of simple analytical models. In particular, we calculate the activation e…
We study the properties of the vortex state of a trapped Bose gas in the large-gas-parameter regime. To test validity of the Gross-Pitaevskii theory in this regime for the vortex states we compare the results of the Gross-Pitaevskii and the modified Gross-Pitaevskii calculations for the total energy, the chemical potential, the density profile and the frequency shift of the quadrupole modes of the collective oscillations of the condensate. We find that in the large-gas-parameter regime two calculations give substantially different results for all the properties mentioned above
In this work we compare the results of the Gross-Pitaevskii and modified Gross-Pitaevskii equations with ab initio variational Monte Carlo calculations for Bose-Einstein condensates of atoms in axially symmetric traps. We examine both the ground state and excited states having a vortex line along the z-axis at high values of the gas parameter and demonstrate an excellent agreement between the modified Gross-Pitaevskii and ab initio Monte Carlo methods, both for the ground and vortex states.
We derive, from the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, an exact expression for the velocity of any vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate, in equilibrium or not, in terms of the condensate wave function at the center of the vortex. In general, the vortex velocity is a sum of the local superfluid velocity, plus a correction related to the density gradient near the vortex. A consequence is that in rapidly rotating harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates, unlike in the usual situation in slowly rotating condensates and in hydrodynamics, vortices do not move with the local fluid velocity. We indicate…
In this Letter we study discrete symmetries of mean field manifolds of condensates of F=2 cold atoms, and various unconventional quantum vortices. Discrete quaternion symmetries result in two species of spin defects that can only appear in integer vortices while {\em cyclic} symmetries are found to result in a phase shift of $2π/3$ (or $4π/3$) and therefore 1/3- (or 2/3-) quantum vortices in condensates. We also briefly discuss 1/3-quantum vortices in condensates of trimers.
We propose a physical system allowing one to experimentally observe the distribution of the complex zeros of a random polynomial. We consider a degenerate, rotating, quasi-ideal atomic Bose gas prepared in the lowest Landau level. Thermal fluctuations provide the randomness of the bosonic field and of the locations of the vortex cores. These vortices can be mapped to zeros of random polynomials, and observed in the density profile of the gas.
The form and stability of quantum vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive atomic interactions is elucidated. They appear as ring bright solitons, and are a generalization of the Townes soliton to nonzero winding number $m$. An infinite sequence of radially excited stationary states appear for each value of $m$, which are characterized by concentric matter-wave rings separated by nodes, in contrast to repulsive condensates, where no such set of states exists. It is shown that robustly stable as well as unstable regimes may be achieved in confined geometries, thereby suggesting tha…
We propose to the create vortices in spin-1 condensates via magnetic dipole-dipole interaction. Starting with a polarized condensate prepared under large axial magnetic field, we show that by gradually inverting the field, population transfer among different spin states can be realized in a controlled manner. Under optimal condition, we generate a doubly quantized vortex state containing nearly all atoms in the condensate. The resulting vortex state is a direct manifestation of the dipole-dipole interaction and spin textures in spinor condensates. We also point out that the whole process can b…
Half-vortices have been recently shown to be the elementary topological defects supported by a spinor cavity exciton-polaritons condensates with spin anisotropic interactions (Y. G. Rubo, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 106401 (2007)). A half vortex is composed by an integer vortex for one circular component of the condensate, whereas the other component remain static. We analyze theoretically the effect of the splitting between TE and TM polarized eigen modes on the structure of the vortices in this system. For TE and TM modes, the polarization states depend on the direction of propagations of particles…
In contrast to charge vortices in a superfluid, spin vortices in a ferromagnetic condensate move inertially (if the condensate has zero magnetization along an axis). The mass of spin vortices depends on the spin-dependent interactions, and can be measured as a part of experiments on how spin vortices orbit one another. For Rb87 in a 1 micron thick trap m_v is about 10^-21 kg.
We calculate the structure of individual vortices in rotating Bose-Einstein condensates in a transverse harmonic trap. Making a Wigner-Seitz approximation for the unit cell of the vortex lattice, we derive the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for the condensate wave function in each cell of the lattice, including effects of varying coarse grained density. We calculate the Abrikosov parameter, the fractional core area, and the energy of individual cells.
In two preceding papers (Infeld and Senatorski 2003 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 15 5865, and Senatorski and Infeld 2004 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 16 6589) the authors confirmed Feynman's hypothesis on how circular vortices can be created from oppositely polarized pairs of linear vortices (first paper), and then gave examples of the creation of several different circular vortices from one linear pair (second paper). Here in part III, we give two classes of examples of how the vortices can interact. The first confirms the intuition that the reconnection processes which join two interacting vortex …
