Coherent disintegration and stability of vortices in trapped Bose condensate

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stability of vortex states in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates, showing that vortex stability can be manipulated via interaction strength and that unstable vortices spontaneously disintegrate.

Contribution

It demonstrates the controllability of vortex stability in Bose-Einstein condensates through inter-particle interaction tuning and analyzes the spontaneous disintegration of unstable vortices.

Findings

Stable vortices can be supported in trapped BECs.

Vortex stability is controllable by interaction strength.

Unstable vortices disintegrate spontaneously into states with different angular momenta.

Abstract

We consider the intrinsic stability of the vortex states of a pure Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a harmonic potential under the effects of coherent atom-atom interaction. We find that stable vortices can be supported, and that vortex stability can be controlled by changing the inter-particle interaction strength. At unstable regimes, a vortex will spontaneously disintegrate into states with different angular momenta even without external perturbations, with the lifetime determined by its imaginary excitation frequencies.