Superfluid dynamics of annular Bose gases
Mathieu de Goër de Herve
Abstract
The irrotational nature of superfluids leads to spectacular rotational properties. For the fluid to rotate, its density must locally vanish at a singular point called a quantum vortex. The annular geometry is of great interest for studying superfluidity as the gas can rotate in this geometry around a central hole without requiring any singularity, allowing the existence of persistent currents along the ring with a quantized circulation. In out experiment, we confine cold atoms dressed by a radiofrequency field in an adiabatic potential based on a quadrupolar magnetic trap. The resulting bubble-shaped potential, both very smooth and easily tunable, allows us to produce two types of ring-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates. A first strategy consists in adding a far-detuned light sheet to confine the atoms at the intersection between the bubble and the horizontal plane imposed by the light field – i.e. a ring. We present the implementation and optimization of this trap and demonstrate the possibility to prepare and observe superfluid currents in the ring. A second path exploits the centrifugal force and the anharmonicity of the adiabatic potential to create an effective Mexican hat potential by rotating the trapped atoms at the bottom of the bubble faster than the trap frequency. After having realized such a system, we probe its quadrupolar modes to characterize the rotation. The study of vortex distribution in the rotating gas also shows a thermal melting effect of the finite temperature vortex lattice.