bose-einstein condensates

Physical Review A

A two-dimensional rapidly rotating Bose-Einstein condensate in an anharmonic trap with quadratic and quartic radial confinement is studied analytically with the Thomas-Fermi approximation and numerically with the full time-independent Gross-Pitaevskii equation. The quartic trap potential allows the rotation speed $\ensuremath{\Omega}$ to exceed the radial harmonic frequency ${\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$. In the regime $\ensuremath{\Omega}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}{\ensuremath{\omega}}_{\ensuremath{\perp}}$, the condensate contains a dense vortex array (approximated as solid-body rotation for the analytical studies). At a critical angular velocity ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{h}$, a central hole appears in the condensate. Numerical studies confirm the predicted value of ${\ensuremath{\Omega}}_{h}$, even for interaction parameters that are not in the Thomas-Fermi limit. The behavior is also investigated at larger angular velocities, where the system is expected to undergo a transition to a giant vortex (with pure irrotational flow).

Rapid rotation of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a harmonic plus quartic trap