Quantized vortices in interacting gauge theories

Abstract

We consider a two-dimensional weakly interacting ultracold Bose gas whose constituents are two-level atoms. We study the effects of a synthetic density-dependent gauge field that arises from laser–matter coupling in the adiabatic limit with a laser configuration such that the single-particle zeroth-order vector potential corresponds to a constant synthetic magnetic field. We find a new exotic type of current nonlinearity in the Gross–Pitaevskii equation which affects the dynamics of the order parameter of the condensate. We investigate the rotational properties of this system in the Thomas–Fermi limit, focusing in particular on the physical conditions that make the existence of a quantized vortex in the system energetically favourable with respect to the non-rotating solution. We point out that two different physical interpretations can be given to this new nonlinearity: firstly it can be seen as a local modification of the mean field coupling constant, whose value depends on the angular momentum of the condensate. Secondly, it can be interpreted as a density modulated angular velocity given to the cloud. Looking at the problem from both of these viewpoints, we show that the effect of the new nonlinearity is to induce a rotation to the condensate, where the transition from non-rotating to rotating states depends on the density of the cloud.