Stationary arrays of vortices in Bose–Einstein condensates confined by a toroidal trap

P. CAPUZZI; D. M. JEZEK

JOURNAL OF PHYSICS B-ATOMIC MOLECULAR AND OPTICAL PHYSICS

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

Año: 2009 vol. 41 p. 1 - 7

0953-4075

We numerically study metastable arrays of vortices in three-dimensional Bose–Einsteincondensates by solving the Gross–Pitaevskii equation with initial imprinted vorticity. Weconsider condensates confined by a harmonic plus Gaussian potential such as that used in arecent experiment. We analyse the energy barrier that prevents the vortices from leaving thetrap and the spatial distribution of vortices for different trap parameters and winding numbers.For configurations forming rings of vortices we interpret the results in terms of the velocityfields produced by the vortices themselves and the spatial inhomogeneity of the condensate.For low enough densities, we found stationary configurations of multiply quantized vortices.