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We study the energetic and dynamic stability of coreless vortices in nonrotated spin-1 Bose-Einstein condensates, trapped with a three-dimensional optical potential and a Ioffe-Pritchard field. The stability of stationary vortex states is investigated by solving the corresponding Bogoliubov equations. We show that the quasiparticle excitations corresponding to axisymmetric stationary states can be taken to be eigenstates of angular momentum in the axial direction. Our results show that coreless vortex states can occur as local or global minima of the condensate energy or become energetically or dynamically unstable depending on the parameters of the Ioffe-Pritchard field. The experimentally most relevant coreless vortex state containing a doubly quantized vortex in one of the hyperfine spin components turned out to have very non-trivial stability regions, and especially a quasiperiodic dynamic instability region which corresponds to splitting of the doubly quantized vortex., Comment: 7 pages, 6 figures

We study stationary clusters of vortices and antivortices in dilute pancake-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates confined in nonrotating harmonic traps. Previous theoretical results on the stability properties of these topologically nontrivial excited states are seemingly contradicting. We clarify this situation by a systematic stability analysis. The energetic and dynamic stability of the clusters is determined from the corresponding elementary excitation spectra obtained by solving the Bogoliubov equations. Furthermore, we study the temporal evolution of the dynamically unstable clusters. The stability of the clusters and the characteristics of their destabilizing modes only depend on the effective strength of the interactions between particles and the trap anisotropy. For certain values of these parameters, there exist several dynamical instabilities, but we show that there are also regions in which some of the clusters are dynamically stable. Moreover, we observe that the dynamical instability of the clusters does not always imply their structural instability, and that for some dynamically unstable states annihilation of the vortices is followed by their regeneration, and revival of the cluster., Comment: 6 pages, 6 figures

Multiquantum vortices in dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensates confined in long cigar-shaped traps are known to be both energetically and dynamically unstable. They tend to split into single-quantum vortices even in the ultralow temperature limit with vanishingly weak dissipation, which has also been confirmed in the recent experiments [Y. Shin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 160406 (2004)] utilizing the so-called topological phase engineering method to create multiquantum vortices. We study the stability properties of multiquantum vortices in different trap geometries by solving the Bogoliubov excitation spectra for such states. We find that there are regions in the trap asymmetry and condensate interaction strength plane in which the splitting instability of multiquantum vortices is suppressed, and hence they are dynamically stable. For example, the doubly quantized vortex can be made dynamically stable even in spherical traps within a wide range of interaction strength values. We expect that this suppression of vortex-splitting instability can be experimentally verified., Comment: 5 pages, 6 figures

Recently, the splitting of a topologically created doubly quantized vortex into two singly quantized vortices was experimentally investigated in dilute atomic cigar-shaped Bose-Einstein condensates [Y. Shin et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 160406 (2004)]. In particular, the dependency of the splitting time on the peak particle density was studied. We present results of theoretical simulations which closely mimic the experimental set-up. Contrary to previous theoretical studies, claiming that thermal excitations are the essential mechanism in initiating the splitting, we show that the combination of gravitational sag and time dependency of the trapping potential alone suffices to split the doubly quantized vortex in time scales which are in good agreement with the experiments. We also study the dynamics of the resulting singly quantized vortices which typically intertwine--especially, a peculiar vortex chain structure appears for certain parameter values., Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

We study the energies and decay of elementary excitations in weakly interacting Bose-Einstein condensates within a finite-temperature gapless second-order theory. The energy shifts for the high-lying collective modes turn out to be systematically negative compared with the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov-Popov approximation and the decay of the low-lying modes is found to exhibit collapse and revival effects. In addition, perturbation theory is used to qualitatively explain the experimentally observed Beliaev decay process of the scissors mode., Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures

The formation of quantized vortices in trapped, gaseous Bose-Einstein condensates is considered. The thermodynamic stability of vortex states and the essential role of the surface excitations as a route for vortex penetration into the condensate are discussed. Special focus is on finite-temperature effects of the vortex nucleation process. It is concluded that the critical angular frequencies for exciting surface modes with the relevant multipolarities yield, also at finite temperatures, the appropriate thresholds for the nucleation of vortices in dilute Bose-Einstein condensates, in fair agreement with the recent experiments., Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, to appear in J. Low Temp. Phys

The surface mode spectrum is computed self-consistently for dilute Bose-Einstein condensates, providing the temperature dependence of the surface mode induced vortex nucleation frequency. Both the thermodynamic critical frequency for vortex stability and the nucleation frequency implied by the surface excitations increase as the critical condensation temperature is approached from below. The multipolarity of the destabilizing surface excitation decreases with increasing temperature. The computed finite-temperature critical frequencies support the experimental observations and the zero-temperature calculations for vortex nucleation., Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures; version accepted to PRA

We study the stability of vortices in trapped single-component Bose-Einstein condensates within self-consistent mean-field theories--especially we consider the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov-Popov theory and its recently proposed gapless extensions. It is shown that for sufficiently repulsively interacting systems the anomalous negative-energy modes related to vortex instabilities are lifted to positive energies due to partial filling of the vortex core with noncondensed gas. Such a behavior implies that within these theories the vortex states are eventually stable against transfer of condensate matter to the anomalous core modes. This self-stabilization of vortices, shown to occur under very general circumstances, is contrasted to the predictions of the non-self-consistent Bogoliubov approximation, which is known to exhibit anomalous modes for all vortex configurations and thus implying instability of these states. In addition, the shortcomings of these approximations in describing the properties of vortices are analysed, and the need of a self-consistent theory taking properly into account the coupled dynamics of the condensate and the noncondensate atoms is emphasized., Comment: 8 pages

Multiply quantized vortices in trapped Bose-Einstein condensates are studied using the Bogoliubov theory. Suitable combinations of a localized pinning potential and external rotation of the system are found to energetically stabilize, both locally and globally, vortices with multiple circulation quanta. We present a phase diagram for stable multiply quantized vortices in terms of the angular rotation frequency and the width of the pinning potential. We argue that multiquantum vortices could be experimentally created using these two expedients., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures

We compute structures of vortex configurations in a harmonically trapped Bose-Einstein condensed atom gas within three different gapless self-consistent mean-field theories. Outside the vortex core region, the density profiles for the condensate and the thermal gas are found to differ only by a few percent between the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov-Popov theory and two of its recently proposed gapless extensions. In the core region, however, the differences in the density profiles are substantial. The structural differences are reflected in the energies of the quasiparticle states localized near the vortex core. Especially, the predictions for the energy of the lowest quasiparticle excitation differ considerably between the theoretical models investigated., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

Considering a moving vortex line in a dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensate within time-dependent Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov-Popov theory, we derive a criterion for the quasiparticle excitations to follow the vortex core rigidly. The assumption of adiabaticity, which is crucial for the validity of the stationary self-consistent theories in describing such time-dependent phenomena, is shown to imply a stringent criterion for the velocity of the vortex line. Furthermore, this condition is shown to be violated in the recent vortex precession experiments., Comment: 4 pages, 1 figure

We compute the structure of a quantized vortex line in a harmonically trapped dilute atomic Bose-Einstein condensate using the Popov version of the Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov mean-field theory. The vortex is shown to be (meta)stable in a nonrotating trap even in the zero-temperature limit, thus confirming that weak particle interactions induce the condensed gas a fundamental property characterizing ``classical'' superfluids. We present the structure of the vortex at ultralow temperatures and discuss the crucial effect of the thermal gas component to its energetic stability., Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett