18 research outputs found
The Transition to a Giant Vortex Phase in a Fast Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensate
We study the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) energy functional for a fast rotating
Bose-Einstein condensate on the unit disc in two dimensions. Writing the
coupling parameter as 1 / \eps^2 we consider the asymptotic regime \eps
\to 0 with the angular velocity proportional to
(\eps^2|\log\eps|)^{-1} . We prove that if \Omega = \Omega_0
(\eps^2|\log\eps|)^{-1} and then a minimizer of
the GP energy functional has no zeros in an annulus at the boundary of the disc
that contains the bulk of the mass. The vorticity resides in a complementary
`hole' around the center where the density is vanishingly small. Moreover, we
prove a lower bound to the ground state energy that matches, up to small
errors, the upper bound obtained from an optimal giant vortex trial function,
and also that the winding number of a GP minimizer around the disc is in accord
with the phase of this trial function.Comment: 52 pages, PDFLaTex. Minor corrections, sign convention modified. To
be published in Commun. Math. Phy
Ginzburg-Landau vortex dynamics with pinning and strong applied currents
We study a mixed heat and Schr\"odinger Ginzburg-Landau evolution equation on
a bounded two-dimensional domain with an electric current applied on the
boundary and a pinning potential term. This is meant to model a superconductor
subjected to an applied electric current and electromagnetic field and
containing impurities. Such a current is expected to set the vortices in
motion, while the pinning term drives them toward minima of the pinning
potential and "pins" them there. We derive the limiting dynamics of a finite
number of vortices in the limit of a large Ginzburg-Landau parameter, or \ep
\to 0, when the intensity of the electric current and applied magnetic field
on the boundary scale like \lep. We show that the limiting velocity of the
vortices is the sum of a Lorentz force, due to the current, and a pinning
force. We state an analogous result for a model Ginzburg-Landau equation
without magnetic field but with forcing terms. Our proof provides a unified
approach to various proofs of dynamics of Ginzburg-Landau vortices.Comment: 48 pages; v2: minor errors and typos correcte
Vortex density models for superconductivity and superfluidity
We study some functionals that describe the density of vortex lines in
superconductors subject to an applied magnetic field, and in Bose-Einstein
condensates subject to rotational forcing, in quite general domains in 3
dimensions. These functionals are derived from more basic models via
Gamma-convergence, here and in a companion paper. In our main results, we use
these functionals to obtain descriptions of the critical applied magnetic field
(for superconductors) and forcing (for Bose-Einstein), above which ground
states exhibit nontrivial vorticity, as well as a characterization of the
vortex density in terms of a non local vector-valued generalization of the
classical obstacle problem.Comment: 34 page
Inhomogeneous Vortex Patterns in Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates
We consider a 2D rotating Bose gas described by the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP)
theory and investigate the properties of the ground state of the theory for
rotational speeds close to the critical speed for vortex nucleation. While one
could expect that the vortex distribution should be homogeneous within the
condensate we prove by means of an asymptotic analysis in the strongly
interacting (Thomas-Fermi) regime that it is not. More precisely we rigorously
derive a formula due to Sheehy and Radzihovsky [Phys. Rev. A 70, 063620(R)
(2004)] for the vortex distribution, a consequence of which is that the vortex
distribution is strongly inhomogeneous close to the critical speed and
gradually homogenizes when the rotation speed is increased. From the
mathematical point of view, a novelty of our approach is that we do not use any
compactness argument in the proof, but instead provide explicit estimates on
the difference between the vorticity measure of the GP ground state and the
minimizer of a certain renormalized energy functional.Comment: 41 pages, journal ref: Communications in Mathematical Physics: Volume
321, Issue 3 (2013), Page 817-860, DOI : 10.1007/s00220-013-1697-
Analysis of Nematic Liquid Crystals with Disclination Lines
We investigate the structure of nematic liquid crystal thin films described
by the Landau--de Gennes tensor-valued order parameter with Dirichlet boundary
conditions of nonzero degree. We prove that as the elasticity constant goes to
zero a limiting uniaxial texture forms with disclination lines corresponding to
a finite number of defects, all of degree 1/2 or all of degree -1/2. We also
state a result on the limiting behavior of minimizers of the Chern-Simons-Higgs
model without magnetic field that follows from a similar proof.Comment: 40 pages, 1 figur
Vortex Rings in Fast Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates
When Bose-Eintein condensates are rotated sufficiently fast, a giant vortex
phase appears, that is the condensate becomes annular with no vortices in the
bulk but a macroscopic phase circulation around the central hole. In a former
paper [M. Correggi, N. Rougerie, J. Yngvason, {\it arXiv:1005.0686}] we have
studied this phenomenon by minimizing the two dimensional Gross-Pitaevskii
energy on the unit disc. In particular we computed an upper bound to the
critical speed for the transition to the giant vortex phase. In this paper we
confirm that this upper bound is optimal by proving that if the rotation speed
is taken slightly below the threshold there are vortices in the condensate. We
prove that they gather along a particular circle on which they are evenly
distributed. This is done by providing new upper and lower bounds to the GP
energy.Comment: to appear in Archive of Rational Mechanics and Analysi
On the regularity of timelike extremal surfaces
We show that timelike minimal cylinders in flat Minkowski space R^(1+n) always develop singularities if n = 2, as recently proved by L. Nguyen and G. Tian, are generically regular if n > 3, and exibit an intermediate behavior when n = 3. The proofis based on the use of the so-called orthogonal gauge for parametrizing timelike minimalcylinders
Variational analysis of the asymptotics of the XY model
In this paper we consider the (-dimensional possibly
anisotropic) spin type model and, by comparison with a
Ginzburg-Landau type functional, we perform a variational analysis
in the limit when the number of particles diverges. In particular we
show how the appearance of vortex-like singularities can be
described by properly scaling the energy of the system through a
-convergence procedure. We also address the problem in the
case of long range interactions and solve it in two-dimensions