Measuring the disorder of vortex lattices in a Bose-Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates how vortex lattices form and decay in a Bose-Einstein condensate, introducing image analysis techniques to quantify the transition from disorder to order in vortex arrangements.

Contribution

It presents novel numerical image analysis methods to detect vortices and measure their order in a Bose-Einstein condensate, advancing understanding of vortex lattice dynamics.

Findings

Vortices are induced by rotating an anharmonic magnetic potential.

Quantitative analysis of vortex distribution transition from disordered to ordered.

Methods successfully measure the degree of order in vortex lattices.

Abstract

We report observations of the formation and subsequent decay of a vortex lattice in a Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a hybrid optical-magnetic trap. Vortices are induced by rotating the anharmonic magnetic potential that provides confinement in the horizontal plane. We present simple numerical techniques based on image analysis to detect vortices and analyze their distributions. We use these methods to quantify the amount of order present in the vortex distribution as it transitions from a disordered array to the energetically favorable ordered lattice.