Three-dimensional vortex configurations in a rotating Bose Einstein condensate

TL;DR

This paper numerically investigates three-dimensional vortex structures in a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate, revealing the conditions for different vortex shapes and their energy configurations.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical analysis of vortex line shapes and their dependence on rotation speed in a 3D BEC, extending prior experimental observations.

Findings

Single vortex lines are confined to x-z or y-z planes.

S-shaped vortices exist at all rotation speeds.

U-shaped vortices occur only at high angular velocities.

Abstract

We consider a rotating Bose-Einstein condensate in a harmonic trap and investigate numerically the behavior of the wave function which solves the Gross Pitaevskii equation. Following recent experiments [Rosenbuch et al, Phys. Rev. Lett., 89, 200403 (2002)], we study in detail the line of a single quantized vortex, which has a U or S shape. We find that a single vortex can lie only in the x-z or y-z plane. S type vortices exist for all values of the angular velocity Omega while U vortices exist for Omega sufficiently large. We compute the energy of the various configurations with several vortices and study the three-dimensional structure of vortices.