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arXiv:1309.7012 · Physical Review A

Vortex ring dynamics in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates

Matthew D. Reichl, Erich J. Mueller

Published Nov 22, 2013• 26 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We use the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation to study the motion of a vortex ring produced by phase imprinting on an elongated cloud of cold atoms. Our approach models the experiments of Yefsah et al. [Nature (London) 499, 426 (2013)] on ${}^{6}$Li in the Bose-Einstein-condensate regime where the fermions are tightly bound into bosonic dimers. We find ring oscillation periods which are much larger than the period of the axial harmonic trap. Our results lend further strength to Bulgac et al.'s arguments (arXiv:1306.4266) that the ``heavy solitons'' seen in those experiments are actually vortex rings. We numerically calculate the periods of oscillation for the vortex rings as a function of interaction strength, trap aspect ratio, and minimum vortex ring radius. In the presence of axial anisotropies the rings undergo complicated internal dynamics where they break into sets of vortex lines, then later combine into rings. These structures oscillate with a similar frequency to simple axially symmetric rings.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.88.053626

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A recent article, Yefsah et al., Nature 499, 426 (2013) [1], reported an unusual excitation in a harmonically trapped unitary Fermi gas. The experiment imprints a domain wall in the trap resulting in oscillations that have periods an order of magnitude longer than the trapping period. The authors interpretted the results as ‘heavy solitons,’ but vortex rings provide a more natural explanation of the observed periods. This paper reports the results of simulations of a vortex ring in a harmonic trap to mimic the experiment, using the density functional theory, specically the extended Thomas-Fermi Gross-Pitaevskii model. Vortex rings in harmonic traps experience long oscillatory periods, comparable to the oscillations found in the experiment. It was found that the oscillatory period of the vortex ring increases with the aspect ratio of the trap, and decreases for oscillations with smaller amplitudes of oscillation. Additionally, oscillations experienced anti-damping when the system was not allowed to cool completely, matching well with the experiment’s observed anti-damped oscillations.
We study the nonlinear dynamics of a three-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) excited by a vortex ring phase imprinting. We identify independent, integrated, and stationary modes of the center-of-mass oscillation of the condensate with respect to the vortex ring movement. We show that the oscillation amplitude of the center-of-mass of the condensate depends strongly on the initial radius of the vortex ring, the nonlinear inter-atomic interaction, and the aspect ratio of the trap, while the oscillation frequency is fixed and equals to the frequency of the harmonic trap in the direction of the ring movement. However, when applying Kelvin wave perturbations on the vortex ring, the center-of-mass oscillation of the BEC is changed non-trivially with respect to the perturbation modes, the long-scale perturbation strength as well as the wave number of the perturbations. The parity of the wave number of the Kelvin perturbations plays an important role on the mode of the center-of-mass oscillation of the condensate.
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We present a numerical method for generating vortex rings in Bose-Einstein condensates confined in axially symmetric traps. The vortex ring is generated using the line-source approximation for the vorticity, i.e., the curl of the superfluid velocity field is different from zero only on a circumference of a given radius located on a plane perpendicular to the symmetry axis and coaxial with it. The particle density is obtained by solving a modified Gross-Pitaevskii equation that incorporates the effect of the velocity field. We discuss the appearance of density profiles, the vortex core structure, and the vortex nucleation energy, i.e., the energy difference between vortical and ground-state configurations. This is used to present a qualitative description of the vortex dynamics.
In a recent article, Yefsah et al. [Nature (London) 499, 426 (2013)] report the observation of an unusual excitation in an elongated harmonically trapped unitary Fermi gas. After phase imprinting a domain wall, they observe oscillations almost an order of magnitude slower than predicted by any theory of domain walls which they interpret as a "heavy soliton" of inertial mass some 200 times larger than the free fermion mass or 50 times larger than expected for a domain wall. We present compelling evidence that this "soliton" is instead a quantized vortex ring, by showing that the main aspects of the experiment can be naturally explained within the framework of time-dependent superfluid density functional theories.