Methods and Probes of Vortex Generation and Control in Dilute-Gas Bose-Einstein Condensates

Abstract

The transition from laminar to turbulent flow in a quantum fluid is marked by the formation of quantized vortices in a Bose-Einstein Condensate (BEC). Several studies were conducted investigating both the controlled formation of such vortices as well as the efficient removal of vortices from a BEC. By using specially designed optical fields and/or lattices, optical interactions with our BEC could be engineered to either create topological defects of interest in a BEC (such as vortices, dark solitons, and diffraction patterns) or remove vortices, restoring a turbulent BEC to a laminar state. These methods are new tools for probing the transition of a BEC between laminar and turbulent states, a transition of great interest in both quantum turbulence studies and in classical fluid mechanics.