Critical Speeds of Rotating Bose-Einstein Condensates
Michele Correggi,
(Dipartamento di Matematica, Università di Bologna)
28/11/2013 12:00
We study the superfluid behavior of a two-dimensional trapped Bose-Einstein condensate in the framework of the Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) theory in the large coupling (Thomas-Fermi) regime. In particular we focus on the response of the system to the rotation and review recent rigorous results about the occurrence of phase transitions in the GP minimizer. Any such transition can be associated with a critical velocity marking a dramatic change in the density and/or the phase of the GP ground state, e.g., the appearence of point defects (vortices). We also focus on the phase structure of the minimizer and prove results about the energy and distribution of vortices.