Vortex lattices in the lowest Landau level for confined Bose-Einstein condensates

Abstract

We present the results of numerical calculations of the groundstates of weakly-interacting Bose-Einstein condensates containing large numbers of vortices. Our calculations show that these groundstates appear to be close to uniform triangular vortex lattices. However, slight deviations from a uniform triangular lattice have dramatic consequences on the overall particle distribution. In particular, we demonstrate that the overall particle distribution averaged on a lengthscale large compared to the vortex lattice constant is well approximated by a Thomas-Fermi profile.