Rayleigh-Taylor instability in a phase-separated three-component Bose-Einstein condensate

Abstract

We investigate the Rayleigh-Taylor instability at the two interfaces in a phase-separated three-component Bose-Einstein condensate in the mean-field framework. The subsequent dynamics in the immiscible three-component condensate has been studied in detail for different cases of instigating the instability in the system. The rotational symmetry of the system breaks when the atom-atom interaction is tuned in such a way that the interface between the components becomes unstable giving rise to non-linear patterns of mushroom shapes which grow exponentially with time. We also identify these non-linear patterns as the solutions of the angular Mathieu equation, representing the normal modes.