Pinning of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate by an optical lattice.

Abstract

We consider the ground state of vortices in a Bose-Einstein condensate. We show that turning on a weak optical periodic potential leads to a transition from the triangular Abrikosov vortex lattice to phases where the vortices are pinned by the optical potential. We discuss the phase diagram of the system for a two-dimensional optical periodic potential with one vortex per optical lattice cell. We also discuss the influence of a one-dimensional optical periodic potential on the vortex ground state. The latter situation has no analog in other condensed-matter systems.