Winding up superfluid in a torus via Bose Einstein condensation

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates through simulation that Bose-Einstein condensation in a ring can produce quantized circulation via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, with scaling laws matching theoretical predictions, aiding experimental verification.

Contribution

It shows that cooling through the critical temperature in a ring induces quantized circulation and confirms KZM scaling laws for BEC, providing a pathway for experimental tests.

Findings

Winding number dispersion follows KZM scaling law.

Density growth exhibits KZM-consistent scaling.

Simulation results support experimental verification of KZM in BEC.

Abstract

We simulate Bose-Einstein condensation (BEC) in a ring employing stochastic Gross-Pitaevskii equation and show that cooling through the critical temperature can generate spontaneous quantized circulation around the ring of the newborn condensate. Dispersion of the resulting winding numbers follows scaling law predicted by the Kibble-Zurek mechanism (KZM). Density growth also exhibits scaling behavior consistent with KZM. This paves a way towards experimental verification of KZM scalings, and experimental determination of critical exponents for the BEC transition.