Boojums in Rotating Two-Component Bose-Einstein Condensates

A boojum is a topological defect that can form only on the surface of an ordered medium such as superfluid $^3$He and liquid crystals. We study theoretically boojums appearing between two phases with different vortex structures in two-component BECs where the intracomponent interaction is repulsive in one phase and attractive in the other. The detailed structure of the boojums is revealed by investigating its density distribution, effective superflow vorticity and pseudospin texture.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Spin textures in rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate two kinds of coreless vortices with axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric configurations in rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates. Starting from the Gross-Pitaevskii energy functional in a rotating frame, we derive a nonlinear sigma model generalized to the two-component condensates. In terms of a pseudospin representation, an axisymmetric vortex and a nonaxisymmetric one correspond to spin textures referred to as a "skyrmion" and a "meron-pair", respectively. A variational method is used to investigate the dependence of the sizes of the stable spin textures on system parameters, and the optimized variational function is found to reproduce well the numerical solution. In the SU(2) symmetric case, the optimal skyrmion and meron-pair are degenerate and transform to each other by a rotation of the pseudospin. An external rf-field that couples coherently the hyperfine states of two components breaks the degeneracy in favor of the meron-pair texture due to an effective transverse pseudomagnetic field. The difference between the intracomponent and intercomponent interactions yields a longitudinal pseudomagnetic field and a ferromagnetic or an antiferromagnetic pseudospin interaction, leading to a meron-pair texture with an anisotropic distribution of vorticity.Comment: 14 pages, 15 figure

Vortex phase diagram in rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We investigate the structure of vortex states in rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates with equal intracomponent but varying intercomponent coupling constants. A phase diagram in the intercomponent-coupling versus rotation-frequency plane reveals rich equilibrium structures of vortex states. As the ratio of intercomponent to intracomponent couplings increases, the interlocked vortex lattices undergo phase transitions from triangular to square, to double-core lattices, and eventually develop interwoven "serpentine" vortex sheets with each component made up of chains of singly quantized vortices.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, revtex

Vortex molecules in coherently coupled two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

A vortex molecule is predicted in rotating two-component Bose-Einstein condensates whose internal hyperfine states are coupled coherently by an external field. A vortex in one component and that in the other are connected by a domain wall of the relative phase, constituting a "vortex molecule", which features a nonaxisymmetric (pseudo)spin texture with a pair of merons. The binding mechanism of the vortex molecule is discussed based on a generalized nonlinear sigma model and a variational ansatz. The anisotropy of vortex molecules is caused by the difference in the scattering lengths, yielding a distorted vortex-molecule lattice in fast rotating condensates.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, greatly revised versio

Non classical velocity statistics in a turbulent atomic Bose Einstein condensate

In a recent experiment Paoletti et al (Phys. Rev. Lett. 101, 154501, 2008) monitored the motion of tracer particles in turbulent superfluid helium and inferred that the velocity components do not obey the Gaussian statistics observed in ordinary turbulence. Motivated by their experiment, we create a small turbulent state in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate, which enables us to compute directly the velocity field, and we find similar non-classical power-law tails. Our result thus suggests that non-Gaussian turbulent velocity statistics describe a fundamental property of quantum fluids. We also track the decay of the vortex tangle in the presence of the thermal cloud.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figure

Quantum Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in phase-separated two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

We theoretically study the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in phase-separated two-component Bose-Einstein condensates using the Gross-Pitaevskii and Bogoliubov-de Gennes models. A flat interface between the two condensates is shown to deform into sawtooth or Stokes-like waves, leading to the formation of singly quantized vortices on the peaks and troughs of the waves. This scenario of interface instability in quantum fluids is quite different from that in classical fluids.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Spontaneous Radiation and Amplification of Kelvin Waves on Quantized Vortices in Bose-Einstein Condensates

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.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Crossover between Kelvin-Helmholtz and counter-superflow instabilities in two-component Bose-Einstein condensates

Dynamical instabilities at the interface between two Bose--Einstein condensates that are moving relative to each other are investigated using mean-field and Bogoliubov analyses. Kelvin--Helmholtz instability is dominant when the interface thickness is much smaller than the wavelength of the unstable interface mode, whereas the counter-superflow instability becomes dominant in the opposite case. These instabilities emerge not only in an immiscible system but also in a miscible system where an interface is produced by external potential. Dynamics caused by these instabilities are numerically demonstrated in rotating trapped condensates.Comment: 10 pages, 9 figure