Adiabatic preparation of vortex lattices

TL;DR

This paper presents two experimentally feasible adiabatic protocols for creating vortex lattices in Bose-Einstein condensates using artificial gauge potentials, enabling smooth transition from a resting state to a vortex lattice.

Contribution

It introduces two novel, experimentally feasible methods for adiabatically forming vortex lattices in BECs via optical flux lattices and a parameter-controlled tight binding model.

Findings

Successful adiabatic loading into vortex lattices demonstrated

Protocols are feasible with current experimental techniques

Provides a pathway for controlled vortex lattice formation

Abstract

By engineering appropriate artificial gauge potentials, a Bose-Einstein condensate can be adiabatically loaded into a current carrying state that resembles a vortex lattice of a rotating uniform Bose gas. We give two explicit, experimentally feasible protocols by which vortex lattices can be smoothly formed from a condensate initially at rest. In the first example we show how this can be achieved by adiabatically loading a uniform BEC into an optical flux lattice, formed from coherent optical coupling of internal states of the atom. In the second example we study a tight binding model that is continuously manipulated in parameter space such that it smoothly transforms into the Harper-Hofstadter model with 1/3 flux per plaquette.