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Physical Review A

Vortex velocity field in inhomogeneous media: A numerical study in Bose-Einstein condensates

Dora M. Jezek, Horacio M. Cataldo

Published Apr 1, 2008• 17 citations
Publisher

Abstract

We present a numerical calculation of the velocity field of an off-axis vortex within a harmonic trapping potential. We consider a condensate with a large number of particles which, in spite of being in the Thomas-Fermi regime, possesses a non-totally-negligible vortex core size. Via a simple, yet realistic, modeling of the vortex-state density, we derive, by treating the equation of continuity outside and inside the vortex core, respective equations for the velocity field and the vortex precession velocity. We find that the vortex precession velocity is given by two contributions: the background velocity field evaluated around the border of the core and another term which depends on the core shape. Our findings concerning the velocity field outside the vortex core are in good agreement with previous theoretical predictions in a narrow region around it, while far away from the vortex we observe a field with a large asymmetry with respect to the vortex position. We show that a better approximation may be obtained by adding the velocity field produced by an antivortex located outside the condensate.

DOI
10.1103/physreva.77.043602

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We present a numerical calculation of the velocity field of an off-axis vortex within a harmonic trapping potential. We consider a condensate with a large number of particles which, in spite of being in the Thomas-Fermi regime, possesses a non-totally-negligible vortex core size. Via a simple, yet realistic, modeling of the vortex-state density, we derive, by treating the equation of continuity outside and inside the vortex core, respective equations for the velocity field and the vortex precession velocity. We find that the vortex precession velocity is given by two contributions: the background velocity field evaluated around the border of the core and another term which depends on the core shape. Our findings concerning the velocity field outside the vortex core are in good agreement with previous theoretical predictions in a narrow region around it, while far away from the vortex we observe a field with a large asymmetry with respect to the vortex position. We show that a better approximation may be obtained by adding the velocity field produced by an antivortex located outside the condensate.
We numerically study properties of the dynamics of vortices in nonrotating Bose-Einstein condensates in the Thomas-Fermi regime. On the one hand, we compute the vortex energy as a function of its position and we predict, using the expression of the Magnus force, the vortex precession velocity. On the other hand, we calculate the temporal evolution of the vortex-state and test the accuracy of the previous prediction. We also investigate the validity of analytical formulae of this velocity involving the healing length. In addition, we analyze the velocity field and the angular momentum and we compare them to available analytical expressions.
We numerically obtain stationary rings of vortices in pancake-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates confined in a three-dimensional nonrotating trap. For this purpose we use a static axisymmetric trapping potential that can sustain locally stable off-axis vortices. We analyze the maximum number of vortices the system can host as a function of the number of particles. We also show that this system provides a very suitable scenario for predicting vortex dynamics in inhomogeneous media. Specifically, on the one hand, we derive an exact and simple analytical expression for the velocity field in a particular vortex position due to the presence of the other vortices of the array. On the other hand, using the fact that in stationary conditions this field should balance all other contributions to the velocity, we investigate the applicability of approximated expressions for the precession velocity obtained in previous works for condensates with a single vortex.
The center-of-mass dynamics of a vortex in the surface region of a Bose-Einstein condensate is investigated both analytically using a variational calculation and numerically by solving the time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We find, in agreement with previous works, that away from the Thomas-Fermi surface, the vortex moves parallel to the surface of the condensate with a constant velocity. We obtain an expression for this velocity in terms of the distance of the vortex core from the Thomas-Fermi surface that fits accurately with the numerical results. We find also that, coupled to its motion parallel to the surface, the vortex oscillates along the direction normal to the surface around a minimum point of an effective potential.
We derive a general and exact equation of motion for a quantized vortex in an inhomogeneous two-dimensional Bose-Einstein condensate. This equation expresses the velocity of a vortex as a sum of local ambient density and phase gradients in the vicinity of the vortex. We perform Gross-Pitaevskii simulations of single-vortex dynamics in both harmonic and hard-walled disk-shaped traps, and find excellent agreement in both cases with our analytical prediction. The simulations reveal that, in a harmonic trap, the main contribution to the vortex velocity is an induced ambient phase gradient, a finding that contradicts the commonly quoted result that the local density gradient is the only relevant effect in this scenario. We use our analytical vortex velocity formula to derive a point-vortex model that accounts for both density and phase contributions to the vortex velocity, suitable for use in inhomogeneous condensates. Although good agreement is obtained between Gross-Pitaevskii and point-vortex simulations for specific few-vortex configurations, the effects of nonuniform condensate density are in general highly nontrivial, and are thus difficult to efficiently and accurately model using a simplified point-vortex description.
The theory of vortex motion in a dilute superfluid of inhomogeneous density demands a boundary layer approach, in which different approximation schemes are employed close to and far from the vortex, and their results matched smoothly together. The most difficult part of this procedure is the hydrodynamic problem of the velocity field, many healing lengths away from the vortex core. This paper derives and exploits an exact solution of this problem in the two-dimensional case of a linear trapping potential, which is an idealization of the surface region of a large condensate. It thereby shows that vortices in inhomogeneous clouds are effectively ``dressed'' by a nontrivial distortion of their flow fields, that image vortices are not relevant to Thomas-Fermi surfaces, and that for condensates large compared to their surface depths, the energetic barrier to vortex penetration disappears at the Landau critical velocity for surface modes.
The motion of quantized vortices on two-dimensional inhomogeneous density backgrounds with boundaries is considered numerically and asymptotically. We show that a Hamiltonian group relation together with the method of images and an approximation for the density background is useful to understand vortex motion. We analyze the vortex motion on a variety of background configurations motivated by experiments on trapped Bose-Einstein condensates including linear and quadratic traps. We show that close to the center of the condensate cloud in the Thomas-Fermi regime the vortex is moving predominantly due to the image vortex that is effectively shifted because of the large density depletion of the condensate at the boundary. Close to the boundary the vortex moves mostly due to a large background density gradient across the vortex core. The vortex velocity is a nonlinear combination of these effects and of the global shape of the background density. We find the complete families of the traveling coherent structures in an infinitely long two-dimensional channel and derive an approximation of the velocity of a single vortex moving close to the center of the channel in the Thomas-Fermi regime.