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Thermally induced instability of a doubly quantized vortex in a Bose-Einstein condensate
We study the instability of a doubly quantized vortex topologically imprinted
on Na condensate, as reported in recent experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett.
\textbf{93}, 160406 (2004)]. We have performed numerical simulations using
three-dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii equation with classical thermal noise.
Splitting of a doubly quantized vortex turns out to be a process that is very
sensitive to the presence of thermal atoms. We observe that even ve ry small
thermal fluctuations, corresponding to 10 to 15% of thermal atoms, ca use the
decay of doubly quantized vortex into two singly quantized vortices in tens of
milliseconds. As in the experiment, the lifetime of doubly quantized vortex i s
a monotonic function of the interaction strength.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figure