Tuning the Critical Current in Toroidal Superfluids via Controllable Impurities

Abstract

We combine numerical and experimental approaches to study how impurities affect the maximum superflow in an annular Bose-Einstein condensate. By tuning the impurity density, we achieve precise control over the stability of persistent currents which increases with the impurity number. In the unstable regime, the complex vortex motion within the impurity landscape, characterized by pinning and unpinning events, governs the timescale of the current decay and its final value. Our work establishes atomic superfluids as a pristine platform for exploring universal mechanisms of superflow stabilization and decay, paving the way for atomtronic quantum technologies.