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Existence and Stability of Vortex Solutions of Certain Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations

Richard Kollár

Published May 4, 2004• 2 citations

Abstract

The nonlinear Schrodinger equation models a wide variety of different physical phenomena ranging from nonlinear optics, water waves, magnetization of ferromagnets to Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). The structure of the equation supports existence of topologically non-trivial solutions - vortices. Surprisingly, we demonstrate that the Landau-Lifshitz magnetization equation which is formally also a nonlinear Schrodinger equation does not admit such solutions. On the other hand, the contrary is true for the Gross-Pitaevskii equation which describes the mean-field approximation of BEC. We investigate stability of vortex solutions by means of a very reliable, sensitive and robust technique - the Evans function. This method, although limited to two dimensions, allows us to study rotating axisymmetric BEC for large particle numbers which can be unattainable by other means.We found a singly-quantized vortex linearly stable.The linear stability of multi-quantized vortices depends on the diluteness of a condensate, with alternating intervals of stability and instability. This work justifies previous results in the literature obtained by less reliable methods and opens up a few interesting questions.

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The nonlinear Schrodinger equation models a wide variety of different physical phenomena ranging from nonlinear optics, water waves, magnetization of ferromagnets to Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC). The structure of the equation supports existence of topologically non-trivial solutions - vortices. Surprisingly, we demonstrate that the Landau-Lifshitz magnetization equation which is formally also a nonlinear Schrodinger equation does not admit such solutions. On the other hand, the contrary is true for the Gross-Pitaevskii equation which describes the mean-field approximation of BEC. We investigate stability of vortex solutions by means of a very reliable, sensitive and robust technique - the Evans function. This method, although limited to two dimensions, allows us to study rotating axisymmetric BEC for large particle numbers which can be unattainable by other means.We found a singly-quantized vortex linearly stable.The linear stability of multi-quantized vortices depends on the diluteness of a condensate, with alternating intervals of stability and instability. This work justifies previous results in the literature obtained by less reliable methods and opens up a few interesting questions.

We study the stability of vortices in a binary system of Bose-Einstein condensat es, with their wave functions modeled by a set of coupled, time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equations. Beginning with an effective two-dimensional system, we identify miscible and immiscible regimes characterized by the inter- and intra-atomic interactions and the initial configuration of the system. We then consider a binary system of Bose-Einstein condensates placed in a rotating harmonic trap and study the single united vortex state in this system. We derive an approximate form for the energy of a single united vortex in the binary system and the critical angular velocity for the global stability of a vortex at the center of the trap. We also compute the metastability onset angular velocity for the local stability of a vortex at the center of the trap. Numerical solutions to the Gross-Pitaevskii equations support these expressions. These rotational results inform us of a novel bimodal formation within the miscible regime of the binary condensate system. We thus demonstrate the nontrivial aspects of vortex stability in interacting binary Bose-Einstein condensates as a result of their nonlinear interactions.

We study the dynamics of single and multi-component Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) in two dimensions with and without a harmonic trap by using various variants of non- linear Schrodinger (or Gross-Pitaevskii) equation. Firstly, we examine the three-component repulsive BEC with cubic nonlinearity in a harmonic trap, and see the conservative chaos based on a picture of vortex molecules. We obtain an effective nonlinear dynamics for three vortex cores, which are equivalent to three charged particles under the uniform magnetic field with the repulsive inter-particle potential quadratic in the inter-vortex distance r ij on short length scale and logarithmic in r ij on large length scale. The vortices here acquire the inertia in marked contrast to the standard theory of point vortices since Onsager. We then explore chaos in the three-body problem in the context of vortices with inertia. Secondly, by choosing the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with saturable nonlinearity, we investigate the single and multi-component WP dynamics within the hard-walled square and stadium billiards with neither a harmonic trap nor driving field. We analyze the stability of WPs by using the variational (collective-coordinate) method. By emitting the radiation the Gaussian WP becomes deformed to a bell-shaped one and then stabilized. As the velocity increases, WPs tend to be stable against many collisions with billiard walls.

The structure and stability of various vortices in

F=1

spinor Bose-Einstein condensates are investigated by solving the extended Gross-Pitaevskii equation under rotation. We perform an extensive search for stable vortices, considering both axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric vortices and covering a wide range of ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic interactions. The topological defect called the Mermin-Ho (Anderson-Toulouse) vortex is shown to be stable for the ferromagnetic case. The phase diagram is established in a plane of external rotation $\ensuremath{\Omega}$ versus total magnetization M by comparing the free energies of possible vortices. It is shown that there are qualitative differences between axisymmetric and nonaxisymmetric vortices which are manifested in the $\ensuremath{\Omega}$ and M dependences.

We construct exact solutions of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation for solitary vortices, and approximate ones for fundamental solitons, in two-dimensional models of Bose-Einstein condensates with a spatially modulated nonlinearity of either sign and a harmonic trapping potential. The number of vortex-soliton (VS) modes is determined by the discrete energy spectrum of a related linear Schr\"odinger equation. The VS families in the system with the attractive and repulsive nonlinearity are mutually complementary. Stable VSs with vorticity $S\ensuremath{\geqslant}2$ and those corresponding to higher-order radial states are reported, in the case of the attraction and repulsion, respectively.