Classical and quantum dynamics of Rydberg electrons and Bose-Einstein condensates in rotating frames

Martin C. Kandes

Jing Qian, Zhou Lü, Xing-Dong Zhao +1 more

Tod M. Wright, R. J. Ballagh, Ashton S. Bradley +2 more

We present a quantum-mechanical treatment of the mechanical stirring of Bose-Einstein condensates using classical field techniques. In our approach the condensate and excited modes are described using a Hamiltonian classical field method in which the atom number and (rotating frame) energy are strictly conserved. We simulate a $T=0$ quasi-two-dimensional condensate perturbed by a rotating anisotropic trapping potential. Vacuum fluctuations in the initial state provide an irreducible mechanism for breaking the initial symmetries of the condensate and seeding the subsequent dynamical instability. Highly turbulent motion develops and we quantify the emergence of a rotating thermal component that provides the dissipation necessary for the nucleation and motional damping of vortices in the condensate. Vortex lattice formation is not observed, rather the vortices assemble into a spatially disordered vortex liquid state. We discuss methods we have developed to identify the condensate in the presence of an irregular distribution of vortices, determine the thermodynamic parameters of the thermal component, and extract damping rates from the classical field trajectories.

P. L. Halkyard, M. P. A. Jones, S. A. Gardiner

We consider a two-component Bose-Einstein condensate in a ring trap in a rotating frame and show how to determine the response of such a configuration to being in a rotating frame via accumulation of a Sagnac phase. This may be accomplished through either population oscillations or the motion of spatial-density fringes. We explicitly include the effect of interactions via a mean-field description and study the fidelity of the dynamics relative to an ideal configuration.

Jia Wang, Marko Gacesa, Robin C ot 'e

A. Martin, Nicholas G. Parker, Rick van Bijnen +2 more

A theoretical study of vortex-lattice formation in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates confined by a rotating elliptical trap is presented. For the conventional case of purely s-wave interatomic interactions, this is done through a consideration of both hydrodynamic equations and time-dependent simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We discriminate three distinct, experimentally testable regimes of instability: ripple, interbranch , and catastrophic . Additionally, we generalize the classical hydrodynamical approach to include long-range dipolar interactions, showing how the static solutions and their stability in the rotating frame are significantly altered. This enables us to examine the routes towards unstable dynamics, which, in analogy to conventional condensates, may lead to vortex-lattice formation.