916 research outputs found
Vortices in Bose-Einstein Condensates: Some Recent Developments
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 for the
vortex centers. In the realm of two vortices we also consider the existence of
stable dipole clusters for two-component condensates. Last but not least, we
discuss mesoscopic patterns formed by vortices, the so-called vortex lattices
and analyze some of their intriguing dynamical features. A number of
interesting future directions are highlighted.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figs, ws-mplb.cls, to appear in Modern Physics Letters B
(2005
Supersonic optical tunnels for Bose-Einstein condensates
We propose a method for the stabilisation of a stack of parallel vortex rings
in a Bose-Einstein condensate. The method makes use of a hollow laser beam
containing an optical vortex. Using realistic experimental parameters we
demonstrate numerically that our method can stabilise up to 9 vortex rings.
Furthermore we point out that the condensate flow through the tunnel formed by
the core of the optical vortex can be made supersonic by inserting a
laser-generated hump potential. We show that long-living immobile condensate
solitons generated in the tunnel exhibit sonic horizons. Finally, we discuss
prospects of using these solitons for analogue gravity experiments.Comment: 14 pages, 3 figures, published versio
Quasiperiodic Dynamics in Bose-Einstein Condensates in Periodic Lattices and Superlattices
We employ KAM theory to rigorously investigate quasiperiodic dynamics in
cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) in periodic lattices and
superlattices. Toward this end, we apply a coherent structure ansatz to the
Gross-Pitaevskii equation to obtain a parametrically forced Duffing equation
describing the spatial dynamics of the condensate. For shallow-well,
intermediate-well, and deep-well potentials, we find KAM tori and Aubry-Mather
sets to prove that one obtains mostly quasiperiodic dynamics for condensate
wave functions of sufficiently large amplitude, where the minimal amplitude
depends on the experimentally adjustable BEC parameters. We show that this
threshold scales with the square root of the inverse of the two-body scattering
length, whereas the rotation number of tori above this threshold is
proportional to the amplitude. As a consequence, one obtains the same dynamical
picture for lattices of all depths, as an increase in depth essentially only
affects scaling in phase space. Our approach is applicable to periodic
superlattices with an arbitrary number of rationally dependent wave numbers.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures (several with multiple parts; higher-quality
versions of some of them available at
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~mason/papers), to appear very soon in Journal of
Nonlinear Scienc
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