Nonlinear quantum piston for the controlled generation of vortex rings and soliton trains

Pinsker, Florian; Berloff, Natalia G.; Pérez-Garcı́a, Vı́ctor M.

doi:10.1103/physreva.87.053624

Cited by 34 publications

(48 citation statements)

References 69 publications

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“…Though this implies that the formation mechanism of the petal structure can be understood in terms of linear physics, the condensate itself and each of its lobes still represent a highly nonlinear system due to polaritonpolariton interactions. Arrays of the lobes represent excitations of the condensate ground state and can arise due to the interaction of counterpropagating superfluids in an effective 1D setting (36,37). We assume that the reported ring condensates occupy excited states instead of their ground states to maintain energy conservation: polaritons generated in the blue-shifted pumping regions that scatter into the condensate lack an efficient mechanism for energy relaxation (28)…”

Section: Theoretical Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled counterrotating polariton condensates in optically defined annular potentials

Dreismann

Cristofolini

Balili

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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107

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Polariton condensates are macroscopic quantum states formed by half-matter half-light quasiparticles, thus connecting the phenomena of atomic Bose-Einstein condensation, superfluidity, and photon lasing. Here we report the spontaneous formation of such condensates in programmable potential landscapes generated by two concentric circles of light. The imposed geometry supports the emergence of annular states that extend up to 100 μm, yet are fully coherent and exhibit a spatial structure that remains stable for minutes at a time. These states exhibit a petal-like intensity distribution arising due to the interaction of two superfluids counterpropagating in the circular waveguide defined by the optical potential. In stark contrast to annular modes in conventional lasing systems, the resulting standing wave patterns exhibit only minimal overlap with the pump laser itself. We theoretically describe the system using a complex Ginzburg-Landau equation, which indicates why the condensate wants to rotate. Experimentally, we demonstrate the ability to precisely control the structure of the petal condensates both by carefully modifying the excitation geometry as well as perturbing the system on ultrafast timescales to reveal unexpected superfluid dynamics.interferometer | rings | BEC | SQUID C ircular loops are a key geometry for superfluid and superconducting devices because rotation around a closed ring is coupled to the phase of a quantum wavefunction; so far, however, they have not been optically accessible, although this would enable a new class of quantum devices, particularly if room temperature condensate operation is achieved.In lasing systems with an imposed circular symmetry, an annulus of lasing spots can sometimes form along the perimeter of the structure (1-6). Such transverse modes are often referred to as "petal states" (1) or "daisy modes" (2) and are interpreted as annular standing waves (3), whispering gallery modes (4), or coherent superpositions of Laguerre-Gauss (LG) modes with zero radial index (5, 6). Their circular symmetry makes them interesting for numerous applications such as free space communication or fiber coupling (7), and their LG-type structure suggests implementations using the orbital angular momentum of light (8), such as optical trapping (9) or quantum information processing (10). Petal states have been reported for various conventional lasing systems, including electrically and optically pumped vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) (2, 4), as well as microchip (6) and rod lasers (1).A fundamentally different type of lasing system is the polariton laser (11,12). Polaritons are bosonic quasiparticles, resulting from the strong coupling between microcavity photons and semiconductor excitons (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21). Their small effective mass (bestowed by their photonic component) and strong interactions (arising from their excitonic component) favor Bose-stimulated condensation into a single quantum state, called a polariton condensate (14,15). These full...

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Section: Theoretical Descriptionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Coupled counterrotating polariton condensates in optically defined annular potentials

Dreismann

Cristofolini

Balili

et al. 2014

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

Self Cite

107

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“…Optical Feshbach resonances, however, have been shown to allow fine spatial control of the scattering length and recent experimental results show modulations of the s-wave scattering length on the scale of hundreds of nanometers [32]. Furthermore, it has been shown that the collisionally inhomogeneous regime supports a plethora of new nonlinear phenomena such as the adiabatic compression of matter-waves [28,33], Bloch oscillations of matter-wave solitons [28], atomic soliton emission and atom lasers [34], dynamical trapping of matter-wave solitons [35][36][37][38][39], enhancement of transmissivity of matter-waves through barriers [35,36,40], formation of stable condensates exhibiting both attractive and repulsive interatomic interactions [41][42][43], the delocalization transition in optical lattices [44], spontaneous symmetry breaking in a nonlinear double-well pseudopotential [45], the competition between incommensurable linear and nonlinear lattices [36,46], the generation of solitons [47,48] and vortex rings [49], and many others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Faraday waves in collisionally inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates

et al. 2014

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We study the emergence of Faraday waves in cigar-shaped collisionally inhomogeneous BoseEinstein condensates subject to periodic modulation of the radial confinement. Considering a Gaussian-shaped radially inhomogeneous scattering length, we show through extensive numerical simulations and detailed variational treatment that the spatial period of the emerging Faraday waves increases as the inhomogeneity of the scattering length gets weaker, and that it saturates once the width of the radial inhomogeneity reaches the radial width of the condensate. In the regime of strongly inhomogeneous scattering lengths, the radial profile of the condensate is akin to that of a hollow cylinder, while in the weakly inhomogeneous case the condensate is cigar-shaped and has a Thomas-Fermi radial density profile. Finally, we show that when the frequency of the modulation is close to the radial frequency of the trap, the condensate exhibits resonant waves which are accompanied by a clear excitation of collective modes, while for frequencies close to twice that of the radial frequency of the trap, the observed Faraday waves set in forcefully and quickly destabilize condensates with weakly inhomogeneous two-body interactions.

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“…Several experimental schemes for creating vortex rings in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs), based on dynamical instabilities of collective excitations [3] or condensate collisions [4,5], have been successfully tested. Additional theoretical proposals involve collisions of two-component BECs with different velocities [6], space-dependent Feshbach resonance [7], or phase imprinting methods [8].…”

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confidence: 99%

Optical tweezers for vortex rings in Bose-Einstein condensates

et al. 2013

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We study formation and stabilization of vortex rings in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates. We suggest a novel approach for generating and trapping of vortex rings by 'optical tweezers'-two bluedetuned optical beams forming a toroidal void in the bulk of a magnetically or optically confined condensate cloud. We demonstrate that matter-wave vortex rings trapped within the void are energetically and dynamically stable. Our theoretical findings suggest the possibility for generation, stabilization, and nondestructive manipulation of quantized vortex rings in experimentally feasible trapping configurations. Despite the multitude of methods to generate vortex rings in inhomogeneous trapped BECs, they turn out to be unstable (see e.g. [6]), which substantially restricts their lifetime and complicates experimental observation. In practice, the vortex ring either drifts to an edge of the condensate, where it immediately decays into elementary excitations, or shrinks and annihilates within the condensate bulk. To the best of our knowledge, a stable vortex ring in a trapped condensate has not been demonstrated either theoretically or experimentally.In this paper, we propose an experimentally feasible trapping configuration that can be used to create, stabilize, and manipulate a vortex ring in a controllable and nondestructive manner. Our method for the vortexring stabilization is based on a simple physical observation: when a superfluid flow involves fewer atoms, the energy cost to nucleate a vortex ring decreases because of a smaller contribution to the kinetic energy of the superfluid. Thus, the spatial position of the vortex core in a toroidal 'anti-trap' with the locally depressed atomic density is energetically preferable. In contrast to such anti-trapping configuration, a vortex ring in a toroidal trap was found to be unstable [9]. Here we propose to use repulsive blue-detuned laser beams to create a toroidal void in the bulk of the BEC cloud held in a large-scale magnetic or optical trap, which can be used to trap and guide a vortex ring. We demonstrate both energetic and dynamical stability of the vortex rings for realistic experimental parameters.Model -Dynamical properties of an ultracold dilute atomic BEC can be accurately described by the meanfield Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE):i ∂Ψ(r, t) ∂t = − 2 2M ∆ +Ṽ (r) + U 0 |Ψ(r, t)| 2 Ψ (r, t),(1) where ∆ is a Laplacian operator, U 0 = 4π 2 as M is coupling strength, M is the mass of the atom, a s is the s-wave scattering length. The norm of the condensate wave function

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Nonlinear quantum piston for the controlled generation of vortex rings and soliton trains

Cited by 34 publications

References 69 publications

Coupled counterrotating polariton condensates in optically defined annular potentials

Coupled counterrotating polariton condensates in optically defined annular potentials

Faraday waves in collisionally inhomogeneous Bose-Einstein condensates

Optical tweezers for vortex rings in Bose-Einstein condensates

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