Temporal shaping and time-varying orbital angular momentum of displaced vortices

Abstract

The fundamental mode of rotation in quantum fluids is given by a vortex whose quantized value yields the orbital angular momentum (OAM) per particle. If the vortex is displaced (off-centered) from the reference point for rotation, the angular momentum is reduced and becomes fractional. Such displaced vortices can further exhibit a peculiar dynamics in the presence of confining potentials or couplings to other fields. We study analytically a number of 2D systems where displaced vortices exhibit a noteworthy dynamics, including time-varying self-sustained oscillation of the OAM, complex reshaping of their morphology with possible creation of vortex–antivortex pairs, and peculiar trajectories for the vortex core with sequences of strong accelerations and decelerations that can even send the core to infinity and bring it back. Interestingly, these do not have to occur conjointly, with complex time dynamics of the vortex core and/or their wavepacket morphology possibly taking place without affecting the total OAM. Our results generalize to simple and fundamental systems a phenomenology recently reported with Rabi-coupled bosonic fields, showing their wider relevance and opening prospects for new types of control and structuring of the angular momentum of light and/or quantum fluids.