Vortex Proliferation in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless Regime on a Two-Dimensional Lattice of Bose-Einstein Condensates

Journal Article · Fri Jul 20 04:00:00 EDT 2007 · Physical Review Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PHYSREVLETT.99.030401· OSTI ID:20957891

Schweikhard, V; Tung, S; Cornell, E A ^[1]

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1. JILA, National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Colorado, and Department of Physics, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309-0440 (United States)

We observe the proliferation of vortices in the Berezinskii-Kosterlitz-Thouless regime on a two-dimensional array of Josephson-coupled Bose-Einstein condensates. As long as the Josephson (tunneling) energy J exceeds the thermal energy T, the array is vortex free. With decreasing J/T, vortices appear in the system in ever greater numbers. We confirm thermal activation as the vortex-formation mechanism and obtain information on the size of bound vortex pairs as J/T is varied.

• OSTI ID: 20957891
• Journal Information: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 3 Vol. 99; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATION
LATTICE FIELD THEORY
TUNNEL EFFECT
TWO-DIMENSIONAL CALCULATIONS
VORTICES