English

Fast rotation of an ultra-cold Bose gas

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We study the rotation of a 87^{87}Rb Bose-Einstein condensate confined in a magnetic trap to which a focused, off resonant gaussian laser beam is superimposed. The confining potential is well approximated by the sum of a quadratic and a quartic term which allows to increase the rotation frequency of the gas above the trap frequency. In this fast rotation regime we observe a dramatic change in the appearance of the quantum gas. The vortices which were easily detectable for a slower rotation become much less visible, and their surface density is well below the value expected for this rotation frequency domain. We discuss some possible tracks to account for this effect.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0307464,
  title  = {Fast rotation of an ultra-cold Bose gas},
  author = {Vincent Bretin and Sabine Stock and Yannick Seurin and Jean Dalibard},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0307464},
  year   = {2007}
}