skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Vortices in Attractive Bose-Einstein Condensates in Two Dimensions

Journal Article · · Physical Review Letters
 [1];  [2]
  1. Physics Department, Colorado School of Mines, Golden, Colorado 80401 (United States)
  2. Electron and Optical Physics Division, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Technology Administration, U.S. Department of Commerce, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899 (United States)

The form and stability of quantum vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates with attractive atomic interactions is elucidated. They appear as ring bright solitons, and are a generalization of the Townes soliton to nonzero winding number m. An infinite sequence of radially excited stationary states appear for each value of m, which are characterized by concentric matter-wave rings separated by nodes, in contrast to repulsive condensates, where no such set of states exists. It is shown that robustly stable as well as unstable regimes may be achieved in confined geometries, thereby suggesting that vortices and their radial excited states can be observed in experiments on attractive condensates in two dimensions.

OSTI ID:
20777369
Journal Information:
Physical Review Letters, Vol. 97, Issue 1; Other Information: DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.010403; (c) 2006 The American Physical Society; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0031-9007
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English