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Predicted signatures of rotating Bose–Einstein condensates

Nature volume 397, pages 327–329 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Superfluids are distinguished from normal fluids by their peculiar response1 to rotation: circulating flow in superfluid helium2,3, a strongly coupled Bose liquid, can appear only as quantized vortices4,5,6. The newly created Bose–Einstein condensates7,9—clouds of millions of ultracold, weakly interacting alkali-metal atoms that occupy a single quantum state—offer the possibility of investigating superfluidity in the weak-coupling regime. An outstanding question is whether Bose–Einstein condensates exhibit a mesoscopic quantum analogue of the macroscopic vortices in superfluids, and what its experimental signature would be. Here we report calculations of the low-energy states of a rotating, weakly interacting Bose gas. We find a succession of transitions between stable vortex patterns of differing symmetries that are in general qualitative agreement with observations5 of rotating superfluid helium, a strong-coupling superfluid. Counterintuitively, the angular momentum per particle is not quantized. Some angular momenta are forbidden, corresponding to asymmetrical unstable states that provide a physical mechanism for the entry of vorticity into the condensate.

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Figure 1: Rotating condensates.
Figure 2: Angular momentum versus angular velocity.
Figure 3: Mechanism for vortex entry.

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Acknowledgements

We thank J. C. Davis, A. L. Fetter, R. E. Packard and D. P. Arovas for comments on the manuscript, and the Institute for Theoretical Physics at Santa Barbara for its hospitality while this work was being completed.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, 94720-7300, California, USA

    D. A. Butts & D. S. Rokhsar

  2. Physical Biosciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, 94720, California, USA

    D. A. Butts & D. S. Rokhsar

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  1. D. A. Butts
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  2. D. S. Rokhsar
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Correspondence to D. S. Rokhsar.

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Butts, D., Rokhsar, D. Predicted signatures of rotating Bose–Einstein condensates. Nature 397, 327–329 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/16865

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