Dynamical evolution of a doubly-quantized vortex imprinted in a Bose-Einstein Condensate

The recent experiment by Y. Shin \emph{et al.} [Phys. Rev. Lett. \textbf{93}, 160406 (2004)] on the decay of a doubly quantized vortex imprinted in $^{23}$Na condensates is analyzed by numerically solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. Our results, which are in very good quantitative agreement with the experiment, demonstrate that the vortex decay is mainly a consequence of dynamical instability. Despite apparent contradictions, the local density approach is consistent with the experimental results. The monotonic increase observed in the vortex lifetimes is a consequence of the fact that, for large condensates, the measured lifetimes incorporate the time it takes for the initial perturbation to reach the central slice. When considered locally, the splitting occurs approximately at the same time in every condensate, regardless of its size.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Incompressible liquid state of rapidly-rotating bosons at filling factor 3/2

Bosons in the lowest Landau level, such as rapidly-rotating cold trapped atoms, are investigated numerically in the specially interesting case in which the filling factor (ratio of particle number to vortex number) is 3/2. When a moderate amount of a longer-range (e.g. dipolar) interaction is included, we find clear evidence that the ground state is in a phase constructed earlier by two of us, in which excitations possess non-Abelian statistics.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Giant vortices in combined harmonic and quartic traps

We consider a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate confined in combined harmonic and quartic traps, following recent experiments [V. Bretin, S. Stock, Y. Seurin and J. Dalibard, cond-mat/0307464]. We investigate numerically the behavior of the wave function which solves the three-dimensional Gross Pitaevskii equation. When the harmonic part of the potential is dominant, as the angular velocities $Omega$ increases, the vortex lattice evolves into a giant vortex. We also investigate a case not covered by the experiments or the previous numerical works: for strong quartic potentials, the giant vortex is obtained for lower $Omega$, before the lattice is formed. We analyze in detail the three dimensional structure of vortices

Phase Separation of a Fast Rotating Boson-Fermion Mixture in the Lowest-Landau-Level Regime

By minimizing the coupled mean-field energy functionals, we investigate the ground-state properties of a rotating atomic boson-fermion mixture in a two-dimensional parabolic trap. At high angular frequencies in the mean-field-lowest-Landau-level regime, quantized vortices enter the bosonic condensate, and a finite number of degenerate fermions form the maximum-density-droplet state. As the boson-fermion coupling constant increases, the maximum density droplet develops into a lower-density state associated with the phase separation, revealing characteristics of a Landau-level structure

Energy gaps and roton structure above the nu=1/2 Laughlin state of a rotating dilute Bose-Einstein condensate

Exact diagonalization study of a rotating dilute Bose-Einstein condensate reveals that as the first vortex enters the system the degeneracy of the low-energy yrast spectrum is lifted and a large energy gap emerges. As more vortices enter with faster rotation, the energy gap decreases towards zero, but eventually the spectrum exhibits a rotonlike structure above the nu=1/2 Laughlin state without having a phonon branch despite the short-range nature of the interaction.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Dissociation and Decay of Ultra-cold Sodium Molecules

The dissociation of ultracold molecules is studied by ramping an external magnetic field through a Feshbach resonance. The observed dissociation energy shows non-linear dependence on the ramp speed and directly yields the strength of the atom-molecule coupling. In addition, inelastic molecule-molecule and molecule-atom collisions are characterized

Phases of a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate with anharmonic confinement

We examine an effectively repulsive Bose-Einstein condensate of atoms that rotates in a quadratic-plus-quartic potential. With use of a variational method we identify the three possible phases of the system (multiple quantization, single quantization, and a mixed phase) as a function of the rotational frequency of the gas and of the coupling constant. The derived phase diagram is shown to be universal and the continuous transitions to be exact in the limit of weak coupling and small anharmonicity. The variational results are found to be consistent with numerical solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure

Stirring Bose-Einstein condensate

By shining a tightly focused laser light on the condensate and moving the center of the beam along the spiral line one may stir the condensate and create vortices. It is shown that one can induce rotation of the condensate in the direction opposite to the direction of the stirring.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, published versio

Quantum theory of a vortex line in an optical lattice

We investigate the quantum theory of a vortex line in a stack of weakly-coupled two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensates, that is created by a one-dimensional optical lattice. We derive the dispersion relation of the Kelvin modes of the vortex line and also study the coupling between the Kelvin modes and the quadrupole modes. We solve the coupled dynamics of the vortex line and the quadrupole modes, both classically as well as quantum mechanically. The quantum mechanical solution reveals the possibility of generating nonequilibrium squeezed vortex states by strongly driving the quadrupole modes.Comment: Minor changes in response to a referee repor

Nonequilibrium effects of anisotropic compression applied to vortex lattices in Bose-Einstein condensates

We have studied the dynamics of large vortex lattices in a dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensate. While undisturbed lattices have a regular hexagonal structure, large-amplitude quadrupolar shape oscillations of the condensate are shown to induce a wealth of nonequilibrium lattice dynamics. When exciting an m = -2 mode, we observe shifting of lattice planes, changes of lattice structure, and sheet-like structures in which individual vortices appear to have merged. Excitation of an m = +2 mode dissolves the regular lattice, leading to randomly arranged but still strictly parallel vortex lines.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure