Creating superfluid vortex rings in artificial magnetic fields

Abstract

Artificial gauge fields are versatile tools that allow to influence the dynamics of ultracold atoms in Bose-Einstein condensates. Here we discuss a method of artificial gauge field generation stemming from the evanescent fields of the curved surface of an optical nanofibre. The exponential decay of the evanescent fields leads to large gradients in the generalized Rabi frequency and therefore to the presence of geometric vector and scalar potentials. By solving the Gross-Pitaevskii equation in the presence of the artificial gauge fields originating from the fundamental HE$_{11}$ mode of the fibre, we show that vortex rings can be created in a controlled manner. We also calculate the magnetic fields resulting from the higher order HE$_{21}$, TE$_{01}$, and TM$_{01}$ modes and compare them to the fundamental HE$_{11}$ mode.