Stability and instability properties of rotating Bose-Einstein condensates (Q2000951)

The authors study the dynamics of harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensates subject to an external rotating force. In the mean field regime which the authors consider, the condensates are described by the Gross-Pitaevskii equation \[i\partial_t \psi = -\dfrac{1}{2}\Delta \psi + V(x) \psi +a|\psi|^{2\sigma} \psi -(\Omega \cdot L) \psi\] where \(\psi\) is the macroscopic wave function for the condensate, \(a\in \mathbb{R}\), and \(\sigma>0\). Further, \(\Omega\) is the rotation axis and \(L=-ix \wedge \nabla\) is the quantum mechanical angular momentum operator. The nonlinearity under consideration is assumed to be subcritical. The first result that the authors prove is the existence of nonlinear ground states. Then the authors show that the set of ground states is orbitally stable. This result generalizes previous work on orbital stability of standing waves in nonlinear Schrödinger equations with unbounded potentials. As a result, the authors provide a new orbital stability result for nonlinear Schrödinger equations with time dependent potentials. Finally, resonances in non-isotropic potentials are also addressed.