Diffraction catastrophes threaded by quantized vortex skeletons caused by atom-optical aberrations induced in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

TL;DR

This paper proposes an experiment to generate and analyze diffraction catastrophes with vortex skeletons in Bose-Einstein condensates, revealing new insights into matter wave dynamics and potential applications in cold atom physics.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to create and observe vortex-laden diffraction catastrophes in BECs caused by atom-optical aberrations, linking optical phenomena with quantum fluid structures.

Findings

Vortex skeletons nucleate within diffraction catastrophes.

Atom-optical aberrations lead to specific caustic structures.

Potential for detecting pairing symmetry in cold gases.

Abstract

We propose a nonlinear atom-optics experiment to create diffraction catastrophes threaded by quantized vortex skeletons in Bose-Einstein condensed matter waves. We show how atom-optical aberrations induced in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates evolve into specific caustic structures due to imperfect focusing. Vortex skeletons, whose cross-sections are staggered vortex lattices, are observed to nucleate inside the universal diffraction catastrophes. Our observations shed further light on the structure and dynamics of Bose-novae and suggest applications of matter wave diffraction catastrophes, including detection of the order parameter pairing symmetry in cold gas experiments.