Vortex-lattice in a uniform Bose-Einstein condensate in a box trap

Polygons of quantized vortices in Bose-Einstein condensates with a circular trap

We consider a disk-shaped cold atom Bose-Einstein condensate with repulsive atom-atom interactions within a circular trap, described by a two-dimensional time-dependent Gross-Pitaevskii equation with cubic nonlinearity and a circular box potential. In this setup, we discuss the existence of a type of stationary nonlinear waves with propagation-invariant density profiles, consisting of vortices located at the vertices of a regular polygon with or without an antivortex at its center. These polygons rotate around the center of the system and we provide approximate expressions for their angular velocity. For any size of the trap, we find a unique regular polygon solution that is static and is seemingly stable for long evolutions. It consists of a triangle of vortices with unit charge placed around a singly charged antivortex, with the size of the triangle fixed by the cancellation of competing effects on its rotation. There exist other geometries with discrete rotational symmetry that yield static solutions, even if they turn out to be unstable. By numerically integrating in real time the Gross-Pitaevskii equation, we compute the evolution of the vortex structures and discuss their stability and the fate of the instabilities that can unravel the regular polygon configurations. Such instabilities can be driven by the instability of the vortices themselves, by vortex-antivortex annihilation or by the eventual breaking of the symmetry due to the motion of the vortices.

Finite-Size Effects with Boundary Conditions on Bose-Einstein Condensation

We investigate the statistical distribution for ideal Bose gases with constant particle density in the 3D box of volume V=L3. By changing linear size L and imposing different boundary conditions on the system, we present a numerical analysis on the characteristic temperature and condensate fraction and find that a smaller linear size is efficient to increase the characteristic temperature and condensate fraction. Moreover, there is a singularity under the antiperiodic boundary condition.