We analyse, theoretically and experimentally, the nature of solitonic vortices (SV) in an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. In the experiment, such defects are created via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, when the temperature of a gas of sodium atoms is quenched across the BEC transition, and are imaged after a free expansion of the condensate. By using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we calculate the in-trap density and phase distributions characterizing a SV in the crossover from an elongated quasi-1D to a bulk 3D regime. The simulations show that the free expansion strongly amplifies the key features of a SV and produces a remarkable twist of the solitonic plane due to the quantized vorticity associated with the defect. Good agreement is found between simulations and experiments.
Solitonic vortices in Bose–Einstein condensates / Tylutki, Marek; Donadello, Simone; Serafini, Simone; Pitaevskii, Lev P; Dalfovo, Franco; Lamporesi, Giacomo; Ferrari, Gabriele. - In: THE EUROPEAN PHYSICAL JOURNAL. SPECIAL TOPICS. - ISSN 1951-6355. - 224:3(2015), pp. 577-583. [10.1140/epjst/e2015-02389-7]
Solitonic vortices in Bose–Einstein condensates
Donadello, Simone;
2015
Abstract
We analyse, theoretically and experimentally, the nature of solitonic vortices (SV) in an elongated Bose-Einstein condensate. In the experiment, such defects are created via the Kibble-Zurek mechanism, when the temperature of a gas of sodium atoms is quenched across the BEC transition, and are imaged after a free expansion of the condensate. By using the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we calculate the in-trap density and phase distributions characterizing a SV in the crossover from an elongated quasi-1D to a bulk 3D regime. The simulations show that the free expansion strongly amplifies the key features of a SV and produces a remarkable twist of the solitonic plane due to the quantized vorticity associated with the defect. Good agreement is found between simulations and experiments.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.