Journal of Physics B Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics
Collision of parallel vortex dipoles in a Bose–Einstein condensate
Guoquan Yang, Suying Zhang, Jingjing Jin
Abstract
Abstract Understanding how two vortex dipoles interact with each other microscopically is helpful for understanding the dynamics of quantum turbulence in a two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate (BEC). We investigate the collision of two vortex dipoles propagating in opposite directions along parallel lines by numerically solving the two-dimensional Gross–Pitaevskii equation. By varying the impact parameter, we identify three general dynamical modes of the vortex dipoles in a homogeneous BEC, which are the vortex recombination mode, the encircling mode and the flyby mode. The existence of these three modes has been corroborated by numerical computations of the ordinary differential equations describing the vortex interactions. Furthermore, we show the corresponding parameter ranges for these modes.