Symmetry breaking in small rotating cloud of trapped ultracold Bose atoms

TL;DR

This paper investigates how small rotating clouds of trapped ultracold Bose atoms exhibit symmetry breaking in their wave functions, revealing vortex formation and interference patterns that indicate rotational and phase symmetry breaking.

Contribution

It provides a rigorous analysis of symmetry breaking signatures in small Bose-Einstein condensates, highlighting the conditions for vortex formation and interference phenomena.

Findings

Rotational symmetry breaking occurs in narrow frequency windows.

Vortices appear as holes in the density distribution.

Interference patterns demonstrate phase symmetry breaking.

Abstract

We study the signatures of rotational and phase symmetry breaking in small rotating clouds of trapped ultracold Bose atoms by looking at rigorously defined condensate wave function. Rotational symmetry breaking occurs in narrow frequency windows, where the ground state of the system has degenerated with respect to the total angular momentum, and it leads to a complex wave function that exhibits vortices clearly seen as holes in the density, as well as characteristic vorticity. Phase symmetry (or gauge symmetry) breaking, on the other hand, is clearly manifested in the interference of two independent rotating clouds.