Observation of persistent flow of a Bose-Einstein condensate in a toroidal trap

We have observed the persistent flow of Bose-condensed atoms in a toroidal trap. The flow persists without decay for up to 10 s, limited only by experimental factors such as drift and trap lifetime. The quantized rotation was initiated by transferring one unit variant Planck's over 2pi of the o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2007-12, Vol.99 (26), p.260401-260401, Article 260401
Main Authors: Ryu, C, Andersen, M F, Cladé, P, Natarajan, Vasant, Helmerson, K, Phillips, W D
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
BOSE-EINSTEIN CONDENSATION
CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSICS
GEOMETRY
LIFETIME
ORBITAL ANGULAR MOMENTUM
PHOTONS
ROTATION
TRAPS
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Summary:We have observed the persistent flow of Bose-condensed atoms in a toroidal trap. The flow persists without decay for up to 10 s, limited only by experimental factors such as drift and trap lifetime. The quantized rotation was initiated by transferring one unit variant Planck's over 2pi of the orbital angular momentum from Laguerre-Gaussian photons to each atom. Stable flow was only possible when the trap was multiply connected, and was observed with a Bose-Einstein condensate fraction as small as 20%. We also created flow with two units of angular momentum and observed its splitting into two singly charged vortices when the trap geometry was changed from multiply to simply connected.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.99.260401