Life time of topological coherent modes of a Bose--Einstein condensate in a gravito optical surface trap

TL;DR

This paper numerically estimates the lifetimes of unstable topological coherent modes in a Bose--Einstein condensate within a gravito optical surface trap, highlighting their potential experimental observability despite inherent instabilities.

Contribution

It provides the first numerical analysis of unstable topological modes in a GOST, estimating their decay times and feasibility for experimental realization.

Findings

Many unstable modes decay slowly enough for experimental observation.

Numerical estimates of mode lifetimes in a GOST are provided.

Unstable solutions can persist long enough to be experimentally realized.

Abstract

We give numerical estimates of various unstable stationary solutions of the Gross--Pitaevskii equation in an axially symmetric set up with a linear trapping potential along the symmetry axis, and a quadratic trapping along the radial direction. These represent topological coherent modes of Bose--Einstein condensates in a gravito optical surface trap (GOST). Despite their instability, we find that many of these solutions decay sufficiently slow, so that they could be realized experimentally.