Instabilities and vortex-lattice formation in rotating conventional and dipolar dilute-gas Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

A theoretical study of vortex-lattice formation in atomic Bose-Einstein condensates confined by a rotating elliptical trap is presented. For the conventional case of purely s-wave interatomic interactions, this is done through a consideration of both hydrodynamic equations and time-dependent simulations of the Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We discriminate three distinct, experimentally testable regimes of instability: ripple, interbranch, and catastrophic. Additionally, we generalize the classical hydrodynamical approach to include long-range dipolar interactions, showing how the static solutions and their stability in the rotating frame are significantly altered. This enables us to examine the..