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arXiv:1312.2542 · Chaos An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science

Chaotic behavior of three interacting vortices in a confined Bose-Einstein condensate

Nikos Kyriakopoulos, Vassilis Koukouloyannis, Ch. Skokos, P. G. Kevrekidis

Published Jun 1, 2014• 61 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

Motivated by recent experimental works, we investigate a system of vortex dynamics in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), consisting of three vortices, two of which have the same charge. These vortices are modeled as a system of point particles which possesses a Hamiltonian structure. This tripole system constitutes a prototypical model of vortices in BECs exhibiting chaos. By using the angular momentum integral of motion, we reduce the study of the system to the investigation of a two degree of freedom Hamiltonian model and acquire quantitative results about its chaotic behavior. Our investigation tool is the construction of scan maps by using the Smaller ALignment Index as a chaos indicator. Applying this approach to a large number of initial conditions, we manage to accurately and efficiently measure the extent of chaos in the model and its dependence on physically important parameters like the energy and the angular momentum of the system.

DOI
10.1063/1.4882169

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Motivated by recent experimental works, we investigate a system of vortex dynamics in an atomic Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), consisting of three vortices, two of which have the same charge. These vortices are modeled as a system of point particles which possesses a Hamiltonian structure. This tripole system constitutes a prototypical model of vortices in BECs exhibiting chaos. By using the angular momentum integral of motion, we reduce the study of the system to the investigation of a two degree of freedom Hamiltonian model and acquire quantitative results about its chaotic behavior. Our investigation tool is the construction of scan maps by using the Smaller ALignment Index as a chaos indicator. Applying this approach to a large number of initial conditions, we manage to accurately and efficiently measure the extent of chaos in the model and its dependence on physically important parameters like the energy and the angular momentum of the system.
In this work we use standard Hamiltonian-system techniques in order to study the dynamics of three vortices with alternating charges in a confined Bose-Einstein condensate. In addition to being motivated by recent experiments, this system offers a natural vehicle for the exploration of the transition of the vortex dynamics from ordered to progressively chaotic behavior. In particular, it possesses two integrals of motion, the energy (which is expressed through the Hamiltonian H) and the angular momentum L of the system. By using the integral of the angular momentum, we reduce the system to a 2-degrees-of-freedom one with L as a parameter and reveal the topology of the phase space through the method of Poincaré surfaces of section. We categorize the various motions that appear in the different regions of the sections and we study the major bifurcations that occur to the families of periodic motions of the system. Finally, we correspond the orbits on the surfaces of section to the real space motion of the vortices in the plane.
Quantum vortices in superfluid Bose Einstein condensates (BECs) are excellent candidates\nfor studying hydrodynamic phenomena, such as turbulence and chaos, due to the\nquantization of vortex circulation and the absence of dissipation in BECs. Since the early\n2000s, many experimental groups have successfully observed vortices in dilute atomic\nBECs.\n\nThis work mainly focuses on creating quantum chaos with a few vortices in a twodimensional\nBEC of Rubidium􀀀87. We use graphics processing unit (GPU) computing methods to simulate our BEC trapped inside a harmonic potential with tight trapping in one direction. The quantum vortices are created by rotating the condensate. After generating the ground state of the BEC with a small number of singly charged vortices with positive phase winding, we imprint a 4\\pi phase winding on top of one vortex in the opposite orientation to that of the original vortex. This phase imprinting annihilates the preexisting vortex and creates a new singly-charged vortex with negative phase winding. Due to the high resolution of our system and an excellent vortex tracking algorithm, the location of phase imprinting can be delicately controlled.\n\nBoth the individual vortex dynamics and the dynamics of the entire system of vortices\nafter flipping a vortex have shown strong signs of chaos. This chaotic nature is\nfurther confirmed both qualitatively and quantitatively by employing two chaos indicators\non our numerical results. These chaos indicators are the Lyapunov exponent spectrum\nand the Smaller ALignment Index (SALI). The Lyapunov exponent remains positive and\nconverges to a positive value during an experimentally realistic time period, which is the\nsmoking gun for chaotic behaviour.
We study the dynamics of small vortex clusters with a few (2-4) corotating vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates by means of experiments, numerical computations, and theoretical analysis. All of these approaches corroborate the counterintuitive presence of a dynamical instability of symmetric vortex configurations. The instability arises as a pitchfork bifurcation at sufficiently large values of the vortex system angular momentum that induces the emergence and stabilization of asymmetric rotating vortex configurations. The latter are quantified in the theoretical model and observed in the experiments. The dynamics is explored both for the integrable two-vortex particle system, where a reduction of the phase space of the system provides valuable insight, as well as for the nonintegrable three- (or more) vortex case, which additionally admits the possibility of chaotic trajectories.
With use of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger (or Gross-Pitaevskii) equation with strong repulsive cubic nonlinearity, dynamics of multicomponent Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) with a harmonic trap in two dimensions is investigated beyond the Thomas-Fermi regime. In the case when each component has a single vortex, we obtain an effective nonlinear dynamics for vortex cores (particles). The particles here acquire the inertia, in marked contrast to the standard theory of point vortices widely known in the usual hydrodynamics. The effective dynamics is equivalent to that of charged particles under a strong spring force and in the presence of Lorentz force with the uniform magnetic field. The interparticle (vortex-vortex) interaction is singularly repulsive and short ranged with its magnitude decreasing with increasing distance of the center of mass from the trapping center. ``Chaos in the three-body problem'' in the three-vortice system can be seen, which is not expected in the corresponding point vortices without inertia in two dimensions.
Motivated by recent experiments studyingthe dynamics ofconfigurations bearing a small number of vortices inatomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), weillustrate that such systems can be accurately described byordinary differential equations (ODEs) incorporating the precessionand interaction dynamics ofvortices inharmonic traps.This dynamics is tackled in detail at the ODE level, both forthe simpler case of equal charge vortices,and for the more complicated(yet also experimentally relevant) case of opposite charge vortices.In the former case, we identify the dynamics as being chieflyquasi-periodic (although potentially periodic), while in thelatter, irregular dynamics may ensuewhen suitableexternal drive of the BEC cloud is also considered. Our analytical findings arecorroborated by numerical computations of the reduced ODE system.
Bose-Einstein condensate(BEC) provides a nice stage when the nonlinear Schrödinger equation plays a vital role. We study the dynamics of multi-component repulsive BEC in 2 dimensions with harmonic traps by using the nonlinear Schrödinger (or Gross-Pitaevskii) equation. Firstly we consider a driven two-component BEC with each component trapped in different vertical positions. The appropriate tuning of the oscillation frequency of the magnetic field leads to a striking anti-gravity transport of BEC. This phenomenon is a manifestation of macroscopic non-adiabatic tunneling in a system with two internal(electronic) degrees of freedom. The dynamics splits into a fast complex spatio-temporal oscillation of each condensate wavefunctions together with a slow levitation of the total center of mass. Secondly, we examine the three-component repulsive BEC in 2 dimensions in a harmonic trap in the absence of magnetic field, and construct a model of conservative chaos based on a picture of vortex molecules. We obtain an effective nonlinear dynamics for three vortex cores, which represents three charged particles under the uniform magnetic field with the repulsive inter-particle potential quadratic in the inter-vortex distance rij on short scale and logarithmic in rij on large scale. The vortices here acquire the inertia in marked contrast to the standard theory of point vortices since Onsager. We then explore “the chaos in the three-body problem” in the context of vortices with inertia.