Quantum vortices and phase transitions in Bose systems

V. N. Popov

Victor Nikolaevich Popov

In addition to the acoustic (phonon) excitations described above, specific excitations called ‘quantum vortices’ may exist in superfluid Bose systems. Attempts to incorporate the vortex excitations have already been made in the original version of Landau's theory (Landau, 1941). The existence of a periodical lattice of quantum vortices in a superconductor located in a magnetic field was conjectured by Abrikosov (1952, 1957). The idea of quantum vortices occurring in rotating helium below the λ-point was introduced independently by Onsager (1949) and Feynman (1955). In this section we present the description of quantum vortices in the functional integral formalism. We will also discuss the role of quantum vortices in the phase transition for the superfluid to the normal state. Our starting point is the functional integration scheme over fast and slow variables. We will apply this formalism mainly to two-dimensional Bose systems and will try to take into account vortex-like configurations of the Bose field. We thus come to the conclusion that the system of vortices is equivalent to the system of charged particles interacting via a new field which play the role of electromagnetic field. At small temperatures there are only pairs with opposite signs, bounded by the long-range logarithm potential. It turns out that the phase transition in the two-dimensional Bose system is nothing but the dissociation of bounded pairs. A similar approach to the three-dimensional systems leads to the conclusion that phase transition is accompanied here by creation of long vortex filaments.

Gergely T. Zimányi

David J. Dean, T. Papenbrock

We study precursors of thermal phase transitions in finite systems of interacting Bose gases. For weakly repulsive interactions there is a phase transition to the one-vortex state. The distribution of zeros of the partition function indicates that this transition is first order, and the precursors of the phase transition are already displayed in systems of a few dozen bosons. Systems of this size do not exhibit new phases as more vortices are added to the system.

Vivek B. Shenoy

Ville Pietilä, Tapio Simula, Mikko Möttönen

Recently, the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless transition was found to be mediated by half-quantum vortices (HQVs) in two-dimensional (2D) antiferromagnetic Bose gases [S. Mukerjee, C. Xu, and J. E. Moore, Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 120406 (2006)]. We study the thermal activation of HQVs in the experimentally relevant trapped quasi-2D system and find a crossover temperature at which free HQVs proliferate at the center of the trap. Above the crossover temperature, we observe transitions corresponding to the onset of a coherent condensate and a quasicondensate and discuss the absence of a fragmented condensate.