The production of quantized vortices having diverse structures is a remarkable effect of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates. Vortex formation described by the mean-field theory is valid only in the regime of weak interactions. The exploration of the rich and diverse physics of strongly interacting BEC requires a more general approach. This study explores the vortex formation of strongly interacting and rapidly rotating BEC from a general ab initio many-body perspective. We demonstrate that the quantized vortices form various structures that emerge from an intricate interplay between the angular momentum and many-body interaction. We examine the distinct impact of the angular velocity and interaction energy on the vortex formation. Our analysis shows that, while the angular rotation generally augments the vortex formation, the interactions can enhance as well as impede the vortices production.
The excitation spectrum of a highly condensed two-dimensional trapped Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is investigated within the rotating frame of reference. The rotation is used to transfer high-lying excited states to the low-energy spectrum of the BEC. We employ many-body linear-response theory and show that, once the rotation leads to a quantized vortex in the ground state, already the low-energy part of the excitation spectrum shows substantial many-body effects beyond the realm of mean-field theory. We demonstrate numerically that the many-body effects grow with the vorticity of the ground state, meaning that the rotation enhances them even for very weak repulsion. Furthermore, we explore the impact of the number of bosons
N in the condensate on a low-lying single-particle excitation, which is describable within mean-field theory. Our analysis shows deviations between the many-body and mean-field results which clearly persist when
N is increased up to the experimentally relevant regime, typically ranging from several thousand up to a million bosons in size. Implications are briefly discussed.