The transition to a giant vortex phase in a fast rotating Bose-Einstein condensate (Q533665)

An ultracold Bose gas in a magneto-optical trap exhibits certain phenomena when the trap is set in rotational motion. In the ground state the gas is a superfluid and responds to the rotation by the creation of quantized vortices whose number increases with angular velocity \(\Omega\). The mathematical analysis is usually carried out in the framework of the time independent Gross-Pitaevskii (GP) equation that has been derived from the many-body quantum mechanical Hamiltonian for the non-rotating system and also for a rotating system at fixed coupling constant and rotational velocity. When studying gases in rapid rotation a distinction should be made between the case of harmonic traps, where the confining external potential increases quadratically with the distance from the rotation axis and anharmonic traps where the confinement is stronger. This paper deals with the combined effects of a large angular velocity and a large interaction parameter on the distribution of vorticity in an anharmonic trap. In particular, the rigorous estimates on the relation between the interaction strength and the angular velocity required for creating giant vortex are established. It is proved that if \(\Omega = \Omega_0(\varepsilon^2|\text{log} \varepsilon|)^{-1}\) and \(\Omega_0 > 2/3 \pi\), where \(1/\varepsilon^2\) is the coupling parameter, then a minimizer of the GP energy functional has no zeros in an annulus of thickness \(\sim \varepsilon \Omega\) at the boundary of the disc. The vorticity resides in a complementary 'hole' around the center where the density is vanishingly small. It is also proved a lower bound to the ground state energy that matches, up to small errors, the upper bound obtained from an optimal giant vortex trial function, and also that the winding number of a GP minimizer around the disc is in accord with the phase of this trial function.